Off-site construction of building services facilities speeded up the build programme, reduced site traffic, and minimised on-site health and safety risk for a prestigious London office development.

4 More London Riverside is a ten-storey building offering high quality, efficient office and common space in a vibrant new business community adjacent to Tower Bridge and opposite the Tower of London. To streamline the build programme for this important inner city development, an off-site construction approach was adopted for key aspects of building services. Construction manager Mace, in collaboration with Axima Building Services, decided to remove this aspect of the programme from the main critical path to enable manufacture of the plant room facilities to progress concurrently with the construction of the building itself.

Axima Building Services approached Armstrong Integrated Systems, a specialist in packaging of building services equipment and off-site manufacture of packaged plant rooms. Armstrong constructed the 13.5m x 2.5m chilled water plant room and the 10m x 4m boiler package in its purpose-designed production facility factory in Halesowen, West Midlands. When scheduled, these were delivered to site prior-tested and fully-assembled, requiring only final connections.

As the plant room and boiler package could be manufactured concurrently with the construction of the building, weeks were shaved off of the overall programme timescale, with final installation completed within days. Reliance on weather conditions was also eradicated for this element of the project and the risk of bottlenecks developing during the build phase was reduced.

Cutting the amount of contractor access necessary for the site also eased traffic conditions in this busy area of London. In addition, health and safety risk was significantly reduced as work was carried out in the more easily controlled and regulated environment of a purpose-designed factory rather than at the construction site. To ensure efficient final installation of the plant room, Armstrong Integrated Systems utilised the latest 3D computer modelling technology to ensure that the plant room design could anticipate and match exactly the dimensions and services of the prestigious new office block.

Steve Cooper, managing director of Armstrong Integrated Systems said, “Efficiency and value for money are key differentiating factors of the More London offering to its tenants, and it was fitting that the approach chosen during construction should reflect these values. Off-site construction has benefits for any project, but in a high-profile, time-critical, and complex project such as More London, this approach really delivers.”

Email: salesuk@armlink.com

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