The Battersea Power Station Development Company is meeting with the Health and Safety Executive this week to present its latest plans and arrangements for the restoration of the London landmark.
Preparatory work on the 40-acre site began last July and the restoration of the iconic structure will be the centrepiece for what is arguably one of the capital’s most eagerly anticipated construction projects.
Once complete in 2025, thousands of new apartments, major leisure facilities, offices and one of London’s largest atriums will be served by a new tube station in a planned Northern Line extension. The £8bn development will employ thousands of construction workers over the next 11 years and aims to set new standards in health and safety.
Former IOSH president Lawrence Waterman, who was appointed as director of health and safety in November 2013, says that more than £100m needs to be spent on restoration work before the proposals for the redevelopment of the power station can be realised.
“Part of the work is physically to protect the building from collapse. It’s real restoration work. The chimneys themselves are literally not physically sustainable,” he told SHP in an exclusive article to be featured in the March issue.
“They are going to be removed and rebuilt so that in terms of appearance and style they are going to be completely identical to what is there at the moment but they are going to be safe and secure and maintainable for the future.”
Work on the first chimney is due to commence in April and the Battersea Power Station Development Company is meeting the HSE to discuss its plans and arrangements for the long-term restoration of the iconic structure.
“The reason why this is such a big structure is because it was a coal-fired power station and there were very stringent rules about sulphur dioxide,” Waterman told SHP.
“Wash towers were created; these tall structures beneath the chimneys. The idea was that the flue gases passed through a rain of water, which washed out the toxic and harmful gases and the emissions coming out of the chimneys were, in those days, relatively clean.”
Waterman said that the equivalent in modern times would be the Drax desulphurisation programme. The problem, he explained, was that the washing out process was akin to creating an internal acid-rain effect that has corroded the power station’s physical structure and damaged brickwork.
Mace, which is overseeing the enabling work, is using a cutting edge method to rebuild the chimneys; steeplejacks will operate special machinery that munches down the stacks to remove the old structure.
“This is a technique that is quicker [than putting scaffolding on the entire chimney] and therefore involves less work at height and is more controlled,” he said.
Waterman will be speaking at a special session on the Battersea Power Station development ‘Beyond health and safety expectations’ at the IOSH conference at ExCeL in London on 17-18 June, which is co-located with the Safety & Health Expo.
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The opportunity should be taken to include a modest power generation facility with district heating for all the accommodation on this site.
Battersea was originally built because there is a need for energy in central London, yet all these high powered projects seem to do is place further demands on the energy network.