Project

Relief camp project, 2023

Two thousand metal bunk beds and two thousand steel lockers, from a proforma signed on 23 March 2023 to the main volume delivered on 8 May.

4,000Units produced
46 daysProforma to main volume delivered
37Truckloads
4Deliveries to site

The order

The proforma was confirmed on 23 March 2023 for 2,000 metal bunk beds and 2,000 two-door steel lockers, delivered to site rather than to a depot.

The lockers were the 2-Door Steel Locker from our catalog, unchanged. The bunk bed was not a catalog model. It was based on the Economic Metal Bunk Bed, with two guardrails instead of one and the bed base cross members made demountable rather than welded.

The calendar the order ran through

Ramadan ran from 23 March to 20 April in 2023. The proforma was signed on its first day. Eid al-Fitr fell on 21, 22 and 23 April, three days of public holiday in Turkey, with 20 April a half day. The first shipment left on 24 April, the day after Eid ended.

This is worth knowing if you are planning your own timeline. A Turkish production window that overlaps Ramadan and Eid is not the same window as one that does not.

Rows of stretch-wrapped locker pallets in a warehouse before dispatch — Lockers wrapped on pallets, staged for dispatch.

Four deliveries

Delivery schedule
Date	Bunk beds	Lockers
24 April 2023	600	600
26 April 2023	—	200
29 April 2023	200	1,200
8 May 2023	1,200	—

The main volume was delivered on 8 May, 46 days after the proforma.

Curtainsider truck loaded with wrapped pallets of flat-packed bunk bed parts, forklift alongside — Bunk bed parts loaded flat on pallets.

Transport

The order moved on 37 truckloads, 26 of lockers and 11 of bunk beds.

Three wrapped pallets loaded square against the trailer bulkhead — Locker pallets loaded to the bulkhead.

Trailer being loaded in a yard with wrapped bundles of bunk bed frames and mesh bases — Flat-packed bunk bed parts going onto a trailer.

On site

Deliveries went to the camp itself. Parts were staged under the tents they would be built in.

Bunk bed components stacked flat on a tent deck beside a row of steel lockers — Bunk bed parts and lockers staged inside a tent before the build.

Assembly

Assembly was not in the original scope. When the deliveries began the buyer asked us to take it on, so we organized a crew on site and coordinated the build ourselves. SOURESA was on site while it ran.

Bunk bed frames part-assembled on a tent deck — Frames going up on the deck.

Crew assembling bunk bed frames along the length of a tent — The build running down one tent.

Installed

The bunk beds ran down both sides of a tent, with the lockers set against the wall. The lockers arrived assembled, so they were placed rather than built.

Assembled bunk beds and a bank of gray steel lockers inside a tent — Bunk beds and 2-Door Steel Lockers in place.

Rows of assembled bunk beds down both sides of a tent — Beds and lockers going in, the far end still to come.

Taken down again, 2024

The camp came down between 1 July and 29 August 2024. We took apart the 2,000 bunk beds and 2,000 lockers we had supplied the year before, packed them into cases, and loaded them out. Our share of the removal logistics came to around 91 truckloads, tents and camp materials included, coordinated in about three weeks.

Bunk bed bases stacked on pallets down a lane between tents, with wrapped locker pallets on both sides — Beds and lockers off the tents, staged on pallets for loading.

The cases were our design. The buyer needed the beds back in store rather than scrapped, and loose components take a lot of floor space. A collapsible steel case holds ten bunks. Full or empty it stacks, and empty it collapses down small, so a store that would have been full of frames holds cases instead.

Steel cases loaded with flat bunk bed components, stacked three high in a warehouse — Loaded cases, stacked.

Packing a case takes longer than throwing components on a pallet, and that is the point. Every part is placed, so a short case shows itself before it leaves. After that the counting stops. Fifty beds to a site is five cases, and nobody at either end is checking whether a guardrail went missing on the way.

The bunks had been in service for a year. They came apart in the condition they were installed in, frames and welds intact, and went back as components rather than as scrap. The buyer is using them again, on other sites. That is one project on one date rather than a tested figure, and it does not stand in for the load test we have not had done.

The site

The delivery address was a NATO relief camp.

A row of large tents across a gravel site with mountains behind — One row of tents on the site.

A single assembled black metal bunk bed standing on gravel at the camp — The project bunk bed. Two guardrails, demountable cross members.

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