Battersea Power station is at the heart of a £9bn project, over 8 million sq. ft of homes, shops, bars, restaurants, cafes, offices, and public space, creating one of London’s largest office, retail, leisure, and cultural quarters. Brogan Group provided combined access services across phases 1 to 3 of the ongoing project, installing 92 Hoists, 25 Mast Climbers, 4 Common Towers and Scaffolding services.
The first phase of Battersea, Circus West Village was completed in 2017 and is now home to 1,800 residents, it involved the construction of a mix of 866 apartments, including 11 penthouses, retail facilities, theatre space and business studios.
The two blocks, varying in height from 8 storeys at its southern end, rising to 18 storeys at its northern end are built on a podium with two levels of basement parking.
Phase 2 of Battersea completed in October 2022, involved restoring the decommissioned old Battersea power station, one of Europe’s biggest brick buildings, into more than 250 luxury apartments, hundreds of shops in the two old turbine halls, plus restaurants and office space for companies including Apple, who are relocating their 1,500 UK employees across six floors.
Phase 3, The Electric Boulevard is a live phase involving the ongoing construction of 1,300 apartments, a 160-room hotel and 350,000 sq. ft of retail, restaurant, and leisure space.
Installation
For phase 1 Brogan Group supplied 17 Hoists and 25 Mast Climbers on the staggered blocks, tying into the recessed fissures to enable works to continue on the surrounding façades. The Hoists had maximum payloads of 2.7t, with varied cage sizes and capacities ranging from 3.2m to 3.8m in length, allowing for the fit-out on all floors.
Brogan Group designed and installed a gantry and MCWP scheme along the elevation parallel to the Battersea Park station to Victoria rail line, in conjunction with the Contractor and Network Rail.
The close proximity to the rail line meant a Mast Climber solution was preferred, for avoidance of anything falling from height onto the railway line, and to minimise the risk of distraction to train drivers.
A combination of twin and single machines were installed, several of which had sliding platforms to enable operatives to navigate past protruding balconies and follow the slightly curved perimeter of the building. Specially fabricated smaller MCWP brackets were designed to raker down the top of the balcony locations and allow the installation of glazing and copper façade panels.
For phase 2 Brogan Hoists were required to overcome the logistical challenges of transporting materials within the internal turbine halls as well as up the external structure of the power station.
Brogan Group’s team of Designers worked closely with the Contractors to overcome the challenges of installing heavy-duty machines on the Grade 2 listed structure, built in the 1930s, with an innovative supporting and tying solution devised.
On the phase, 52 goods/passenger and goods-only Hoists of various sizes were installed, with a total capacity of over 154,000kg and a combined vertical elevation height of 1,630m.
On Phase 3 of the complex facades making up The Electric Boulevard Brogan Group Engineers designed a series of Common Towers, with Hoists feeding off all levels on each of the three blocks.
Four Common Towers were supplied across the blocks, reaching 52m high and fed by 22 5000kg goods-only Hoists and large driverless passenger/goods Hoists.
The Hoists clustered around each Common Tower minimised the facade cladding leave-down areas as well as reduced obstacles to the logistics routes along the boulevard.
Kenny Ryan, Project Director
"Brogan Group are providing the 17no Hoists on the Battersea Power Station Phase 1 project. They won the contract through a competitive tendering process showing innovative solutions to the interfaces with the concrete frame and external cladding. We carried out a factory visit in Europe to view the proposed hoists prior to the appointment and believe that we have bought an excellent product with a good run time. Brogan Group are a collaborative contractor who works well with other contractors to achieve project success."