2009-06-22 Easy access for major King’s Cross refurbishment

Harsco Infrastructure (SGB) has erected a custom-designed scaffolding and temporary roof structure on some of the best examples of Victorian railway architecture in Europe. Supplied to BAM Construction, the equipment is assisting in the £136 million refurbishment of historic railway buildings around London King’s Cross. Harsco Infrastructure’s contract with BAM involves the contractor refurbishing the Eastern Goods Yard, including the Grade II listed Transit Sheds and Granary Building. It forms phase one of ambitious £2billion regeneration scheme in the area, which will see the 27 ha site being transformed into a new community providing homes, offices, shops and amenity areas.

BAM approached Harsco Infrastructure at an early stage of the design process, in order to develop an efficient and sensitive method of providing access for contractors working on the Granary Building and Transit Sheds. Rising to 10 levels in places, the scaffolding requirements were extensive and needed to be robust. However, in order to avoid unnecessary damage to the listed structures, Harsco Infrastructure had to find a way of tying the scaffold into the building without drilling into the brickwork.

“As we couldn’t drill through the walls, we used the window openings to help us tie the scaffolding to the building” comments Bob Morris, Contracts Manager at Harsco Infrastructure. Since the restoration would involve removal and replacement of all the windows, Harsco Infrastructure saw the potential of exploiting these temporary openings. “Basically, we’ve put a tie through the window and held it in place with a beam across the back” explains Mr Morris.

Harsco Infrastructure has supplied its popular CUPLOK® system scaffold, with wide, eight-board, decks to provide ample space for the contractor’s operatives. The absence of diagonal bracing ensured there are no obstacles to hamper the restoration work.

To ensure stability of the scaffold on the Transit Sheds, Harsco Infrastructure suspended a series of one-tonne ballast bags from node points on the CUPLOK® scaffold, removing the need to rely on mechanical fixings to the building. The bags also served as an environmentally efficient way of storing the crushed masonry that the refurbishment works created. Instead of increasing site traffic by removing the material, it will be re-used as aggregate on another part of the site once its use as scaffold weights is complete.

BAM is also replacing the Granary Building’s original dual-pitch roof. Here, Harsco Infrastructure has erected its COVERSPAN® temporary roof system to provide a sheltered environment for the contractor.

Again, it was vital that the temporary roof did not interfere with the original structure and so the roofing frame is attached directly to the CUPLOK® scaffolding. “The roof was designed at tender stage and Harsco Infrastructure only had to modify it slightly for this project” explains BAM’s Construction Manager David Stephenson.

Harsco Infrastructure’s current contract will see them working with BAM until 2010, with the temporary roof installation on site until September 2009.

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