2 Lucan Place

Police station in a former life

2 Lucan Place is the site of the former Chelsea Police Station and just like the modular gantry platform we supplied, it has been given a new lease of life. The original building has been demolished to make way for a 10-storey, mixed-use development.

We were excited to work on this prestigious project directly with subcontractor Deconstruct and affiliated main contractor, DE Group. Our primary involvement was temporary works support for the basement excavation and construction.

Tricky logistics with no pit lane

Because of the project location – tucked away in a backstreet in the leafy London borough of Kensington & Chelsea – the consideration of logistics was key.

The Local Planning Authority would not grant a pit lane or extra access and the footprint of the basement is basically the same as the site hoarding perimeter. That meant we had to work with the site team to come up with a solution to create more ‘set-down area’ and somewhere for deliveries and muck away trucks to park.

Modular platform to the rescue

For the recent Cambridge House project (also DE Group / Deconstruct), we designed, manufactured, and supplied a large modular gantry platform that had an almost ‘flush transition’ with the capping beam / road-level. This allowed a long-reach clamshell excavator to load a muck away truck completely off the road, without interfering with passing traffic or pedestrians.

Deconstruct purchased the platform from us for the Cambridge House project and as it worked out so well at Cambridge House, it was quickly being discussed as a possible methodology for how to excavate the Lucan Place basement.

Slight glitch: the platform would need to be larger and reworked to suit required size was quite different to Lucan Place. Luckily for Deconstruct, our in-house engineering team had designed it as a modular system so that we could add more sections and increase the footprint of the platform.
Watch: Platform in use at Cambridge House.

As good as new…

After the Cambridge House project, our temporary works and mechanical design engineers came up with a design that would fit the proposed scheme.

The works were too major to be carried out on-site, so it was transported back to our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Alton, Hampshire, where the modifications were made, and it underwent a complete refurbishment ready to be sent out to Lucan Place.

The rest of the temporary works

So, we were responsible for the design and delivery of the whole temporary propping / works scheme. That involved designing a full propping scheme to work with the gantry platform and vice-versa.

Up to now, you’d be forgiven for thinking this project was a ‘walk in the park’. But it wasn’t. Temporary works projects rarely are. It’s never anyone’s fault, exactly, just that there are a lot of moving parts. One of the ‘moving parts’ to this project was the capping beam. (It wasn’t literally “moving”, we should add).

Our Temporary Works Team needed to find a way to adapt the design of the capping beam so buildability wouldn’t become an issue. Their initial scheme, propping directly onto the capping beam, became unfeasible, so instead they opted for installing a Waling Beam just below it to prop the main basement structure…first challenge overcome!

However, unaligned piles and a twisted plunge column meant the team had to adapt again, this time reconfiguring the props to bypass the piles and retro-designing a concrete column encasement to support the twisted plunge column.

WIN. WIN. WIN.

After overcoming the various design challenges and bringing all the logistics together, it was great to see the site in action, with the clamshell excavating the basement while props were installed and maintained.

A safe (TICK) efficient (TICK) and sustainable (TICK) excavation! WIN. WIN. WIN. Another great collaboration between Deconstruct and Conquip Engineering Group!

To find out why we’re currently a no 1 choice in temporary propping solutions, click here or to view other projects.