College Road Croydon is Europe's tallest volumetric modular building. Completed in 2023, with the tallest of its two towers standing at 163m tall and built by Modular experts Tide Construction. The scheme will bring 817 Co-Living homes and 120 affordable residential units to South London.
It is one of several record-setting modular buildings that Brogan Group have worked on with Tide, who continuously supersede their own records, on projects such as Apex House, Wembley, and Lewisham Exchange, the world’s tallest modular student building.
Installation
The unique profile required Brogan to design individual mechanical sliding platforms that bridged the distance from each Mast Climber to the building.
Like Tide’s offsite methodology, Brogan Group fabricated the platforms offsite at the main UK depot. These were then shipped ready to install with the Mast Climber units for the façade fit stage of the project.
A combination of single, twin and double-stacked Mast Climbers were installed around the two 49 and 35-storey towers, with the Double stacked MCWPs enabling multiple crews to work simultaneously on the same elevation.
To allow ground-level access a scaffolding gantry was constructed on one elevation to base a MCWP, built off a structural slab on one side due to site restrictions.
The design of the final few storeys on the 35-storey block meant that the ground-based Mast Climbers could not service all the way up, but the Brogan design team devised a solution to overcome this.
Cantilevered I-beams were installed on the 34th storey by the Brogan team to support a heavy-duty platform and additional MCWPs to service the final few levels.
John O ’Dwyer, Project Director, Tide
We have worked with Brogan Group on several of our record-setting projects, the fast efficient installation of their powered access solutions works well with our modular construction methods where we can build at much faster speeds than traditional construction techniques. In particular, the adaptions they have made to their Mast Climbers for the College Road building design have ensured the smooth progression on the Façade works.