Failed steelwork fabricator Rowecord is negotiating with project manager Mace on completing its work on the complex steelwork package at the British Museum’s World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre.
Revealed to the press this week, the £135m prestige project is built around 1,778 tonnes of steelwork. The steel supports five subterranean floors for storing the museum’s collection, a double-height ground floor exhibition space and three floors of offices and conservation studios.
Rowecord’s staff on the project continued to work on it this week, following the appointment of administrators Grant Thornton last Friday.
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The Welsh firm was one of several key subcontractors on the technically challenging project which involved excavating between the Grade I listed main museum building and the 100-year-old King Edward extension to the north of the site. The list also includes piling contractor Bachy, concrete specialist PJ Carey, Austrian cladding firm GIG, Briggs Asphalt and M&E contractor MJ Lonsdale.
But the museum was familiar territory for Mace’s operations director Willie Shaw, who was also involved in Lord Foster’s Great Court project – at that time the WCEC site was filled with Mace’s site huts.
Cross section of the British Museum’s World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre
For Shaw, the biggest challenge was accident-free logistics – scheduling 4,369 “muck aways” and then the delivery of vast amounts of concrete, blockwork and steel between 7am and 7pm. A particular challenge was separating trucks from bus parties of students and school children.
But the pay off for this headache was the variety involved. “We had 10 levels, and 68% of the project is underground. No room and no level was the same – normally on a commercial project, it’s ‘repeat, repeat, repeat’ – everyone gets into a cycle. But in this job, every phase was a fresh challenge,” said Shaw.
And there were other advantages to working at one of the world’s busiest tourist destinations. “We were working within 2 metres of the existing museum, so everyone on site had a two-hour back-of-house tour of what was on the other side of the wall. On construction, it’s all about bragging rights, so ‘I’ve been working at the British Museum’ is a great one. ”
The British Museum’s director Neil MacGregor said: “The Great Court was a visible and public change, this is about the functioning of the museum and the areas the public doesn’t see. But it’s one of the largest construction projects undertaken in the museum’s 250-year history and will have a huge impact on how the museum is run.”
The new 1,100 sq m Sainsbury Exhibitions gallery, a long narrow space, will be perfectly suited to exhibit the remains of a 37m Viking narrow boat that will be the star of the first exhibition when the WCEC opens in March 2014.
