15- Armstrong offsite manufacture product development design consultants News 070408

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OFF-SITE MANUFACTURE KEEPS LONDON TRANSPORT MUSEUM’S REFURB ON TRACK

The specification of an Armstrong off-site manufactured plant room for London’s Transport Museum cut programme times significantly for this major refurbishment project. By reducing the amount of on-site activity, the packaged plant room minimised the impact of the refurbishment on this famous Grade II listed Victorian building. In addition, now that the museum has reopened, it will play a key role in preserving the museum’s valuable collection of exhibits for future generations.
The project at London’s Transport Museum, in Covent Garden’s flower market addressed problems with the condition of this historic building which needed urgent attention. The environmental conditions prior to the refurbishment were not ideal for fragile museum artefacts. Temperatures in the building varied to too great a degree – very hot in summer and freezing cold in winter - which was particularly damaging for the company’s vintage vehicles. The refurbishment project involved repairs to the roof and renewal of the building services equipment to improve control of environmental conditions. This will safeguard the museum’s vehicle collection and has allowed some of its most fragile items to be displayed for the first time.
The design consultant, Max Fordham LLP, specified an off-site manufactured plant room for the project, which incorporates systems for chilled water as well as heating and domestic hot water. M & E contractor Meica Services approached Armstrong Integrated Systems, who constructed the plant room in its factory in Halesowen, West Midlands and delivered it to site full-assembled, in an enclosure, and requiring only final connections.
Manufacturing the plant room off-site enabled construction to take place concurrently with the project, instead of at the end of the building process. This essentially removed it from the critical path, and final installation of the plant room could be achieved within days, instead of requiring a number of weeks. Reducing the amount of contractor access necessary for this part of the project also lessened the impact of the refurbishment on the fabric of the listed building and improved traffic conditions around this busy central London site. In addition, health and safety risk was significantly reduced. Assembly work which would have otherwise been carried out at height and outdoors on the building’s roof, was managed in the more easily controlled environment of a purpose-designed factory. Studies have shown that the factory environment can also facilitate higher levels of finished quality for plant rooms and lead to shorter timescales as there are not the constrictions of weather, access and bottlenecks relating to other aspects of the build.
To ensure the finished plant room could be lifted into place and accurately positioned on site, Armstrong Integrated Systems utilised the latest 3D computer modelling technology to ensure that the plant room design could anticipate and match exactly any design idiosyncrasies of this Victorian building.
Steve Cooper, managing director of Armstrong Integrated Systems said, “There are significant technical and logistical challenges involved when carrying out major refurbishments on listed buildings. The position of this site in such a busy part of London added to this complexity. Off-site manufacture of the plant room reduced significantly the sorts of headaches encountered by site managers in projects of this sort and enabled the overall project timescale for this high-profile refurbishment to be reduced.”