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Installing the underwater car, jet plane and speedboat of the famous secret agent into the lower level of the Trocadero entertainment complex, in the heart of Piccadilly involved precision timing.
A cantilever gantry was offloaded kerbside, just as soon as the complex closed, was brought into the building and set up, the car, plane and speedboat where then brought in and carefully lowered with the gantry into the lower level. The gantry then had to be dismantled, removed from the building and taken away, all before 7 am and the impending rush hour.
Because of their size and weight, we were asked by a landscaping specialist to accept delivery of several tall Californian Palm Trees and utilising a series of scaffold lifting gantries they were brought into the building and positioned into the atrium of a major pharmaceutical company, where we assisted the contractors to upright and plant the trees.
Again working with the same landscape contractor and their architect client, we rigged up a lifting gantry to hoist and position, as directed by the architect, large pieces of stone to form a feature in a luxurious garden.
A different project involved a listed warehouse in docklands, which had a basement floor constructed from hundreds of large flagstone slabs, these had to be removed to allow building works to proceed. Firstly the slabs had to be removed from the basement with a fork lift, which had to be dismantled to get it in the basement and reassembled insitu, loaded onto transport and transferred to a storage area situated beneath the docklands light railway, where they were unloaded, stacked and banded together.
Working with a leading glass sculptor, we have installed a glass sculpture weighing over 2000 kgs onto the external face of an international fashion house in Mayfair, where it was suspended over the entrance foyer from a single support bracket.
We have also collected from his studio, delivered to Henly-on-Thames and assisted in the assembly of various pieces on display at a prestigious art exhibition by the river.
When the staff of the worlds favourite airline were relocated to their brand new office complex at Heathrow, their entrance foyer was topped off by the under carriage of a 747 jet, which we were commissioned to collect and install.
Having a head for heights proved a major consideration when we won the project to install twenty four, 10 tonne air handling units, onto open steel work some 25 metres above the ground.
Each section of unit was offloaded and stored beneath the working area using a 12 tonne forklift. Then utilising scissor lifts and cherry pickers to gain access to the steel platform, we installed twin runway beams and electric chain hoists, in order to raise each section of unit up to the platform height where a series of cross steels & winches were used to pull each section into their final position where we assembled them.
The Air Handling Units formed the major part of the critical air conditioning installation within a new exhibition centre in London’s docklands.
How to get a 20 tonne generator into the roof top plantroom of one of the City of London’s biggest office blocks presented a challenge.
The answer was to hire & manage an 800 tonne telescopic crane and hoist the generator to the roof where it was landed on a purpose built scaffold runway and tracked into the plantroom. The massive crane was located across both carriageways of London Wall, which was closed to traffic for the weekend the lift took place.
After the generator had been lifted nearly 100 metres onto the roof of the office complex, it was manually tracked some 15 metres into the plantroom on a platform specially constructed by PML. Positioning was critical as access to the plantroom was limited to as little as 100mm clearance.
Working for the electricity provider at Gatwick Airport, our HIAB is often called upon to collect transformers from their stores and when loaded take them to their various locations throughout the airport environs.
Removing and replacing cooling towers with a mobile crane in busy Leicester Square in the summer, presented a unique set of public interface problems to overcome.
In the days prior to the weekend the towers were disabled and prepared ready for removal on the Saturday. Then on the day in question the crane, transport and our operatives arrived on site at 0600 hrs in the morning, the crane was set up and heras fencing assembled around the crane to cordon the area off from the public. Lifting was carried out all day removing and replacing sections of cooling tower right up until the expiry of the permit at 1800 hours.
Just as soon as the work was finished and the crane was de-rigged, we proceeded to dismantle the cordon of protective fencing but in the instant the fencing was taken down, a sea of humanity swept into the space.
Four boilers, each weighing 8500 kgs had to be offloaded with a mobile crane, then moved on a purpose made trackway to the plantroom which was approximately 100 metres down a series of tight and twisting corridors using a series of winches.
Our particular skills are frequently called upon by one regular client, a global rental specialist, who provide their customer’s with temporary power and temperature. The work that we carry out is invariably due to the difficult location and/or circumstances of the project, these can range from a muddy field at the end of a farm track to standby power for the millennium eve celebrations of a national broadcast.
Replacing Air Handling Units over a weekend without disruption to the customers banking service proved an interesting project. Starting with the arrival of our operatives at 5pm on the Friday evening, we unloaded all our equipment into the loading bay ready for the 6pm start when all the occupants had left the building.
The first task was to protect the stairs, lift and corridor access routes with sheets of hardboard and correx while the AHU was being disabled. Then working throughout the night the unit was cut up into manageable sections, tracked to the loading bay for disposal by our transport, ready for the replacement unit, which was delivered for 12 noon on the Saturday. A second crew then tracked the flat pack AHU to the plantroom, where it was assembled, collected up all the protection and cleared site.
The cutting skills used by our personnel have not just been employed on traditional mechanical & electrical equipment, recent projects have included the cutting up and removal of a redundant escalator at an entertainment centre in Piccadilly and the removal of four internal passenger lifts, comprising car, chains, counterweights and guide rails from the lift shaft.
Working in partnership with our client’s pipe fitters, we are often called upon to provide a mobile crane, slinger and a banksman to offload pipework and fittings from their delivery vehicle and hoist to the appropriate level.
In addition the sheer size and weight of the pipework has meant working alongside the pipe fitter to rig up lifting tackle to hoist the pipe sections up to high level and placing into brackets for assembly.
To ensure that the new equipment arrived in time for craneage onto the roof of an office block in the Victoria area of London, our client arranged for the manufacturer to deliver to our yard a few days prior to the lift. On the weekend in question we then loaded the chiller onto our HIAB and delivered the equipment to the road closure from where we hoisted the chiller to the roof.
Working at Stansted Airport we were employed to work in conjunction with our clients pipe fitters to offload chilled beams, skate them into the building, raise to high level on a hydraulic lifting table, laser level and install.
Utilising our own HIAB transport and fully equipped crews, we have relocated and/or removed a range of individual production equipment, general office equipment catering equipment and complete factories, including working airside.
In addition we have moved the heavy items of whole departments of local colleges where they have relocated to new premises.
Working for a leading UPS supplier Plant Movements were commissioned to travel to Belgium to inspect in their manufacturing centre, one of six 30 tonne generator sets each mounted on 6 metre long skids, which were being prepared for shipment to London’s Canary Wharf. Because of the size and weight of the plant items it was not possible to utilise the site tower cranes therefore, we were required to hire & manage a 300 tonne mobile crane rigged with a luffing fly to lift the component parts of the set to the 15th floor of the building. The preparation of the operation included the arrangement of a full road closure on the south side of the wharf and traffic diversions around the complicated one-way system.
Because of the confined working environment the generator sets had to be dismantled at ground level using a second mobile crane, the individual components where then lifted to the 15th floor where they were landed on the preston platform.
Once landed on the platform the skid, engine, clutch and accurotor had to be tracked through a corridor with just 20mm clearance, into the specially constructed acoustic plantroom and utilising our equipment we then
re-assembled the generator sets, ready for commissioning by the manufacturers engineers.
The floor of the plantroom was formed by an acoustic base which the generator sets where placed upon and in order to get the base from the unloading point to the final destination we designed and constructed a purpose built carrying frame.
Also included within the package were the high critical control systems including HV / LV switchgear, control panels and load banks for future on site testing and commissioning. In addition the package substations, made up of two 8 tonne transformers and their control panels, housings and busbar, had to be hoisted to the same level over a number of visits utilising the site tower crane. This involved night working in order to access the very complicated routes through the building whilst allowing other trades to continue with their program of works.
In addition to offloading and installing control panels and switchgear on numerous water treatment plants ranging from Yorkshire, to Swanage, to Norfolk, we offloaded and installed twelve tonne sludge presses for Anglia Water.
Not only are we able to collect cabins & containers with our HIAB vehicle and deliver them to any designated location but we are also able to arrange craneage and hoisting of cabins on site, as required, including manually moving them where necessary.
Pumps come in various sizes ranging from the very small to enormous, some of the largest we have ever handled and installed, including raising up onto their respective inertia bases, were at the chilled water plantroom for the Channel Tunnel, each pump weighed approx 8 tonnes with the inertia base weighing 10 tonnes.
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