RUSI, 61 Whitehall, London – Monitoring, UK

Client
> Royal United Services Institute

Sector/Market
> Property

Services
> Monitoring – Structural & Environmental

Location
> 61 Whitehall, London

Project summary

Murphy Geospatial was involved in the refurbishment of RUSI’s (Royal United Services Institute), an iconic Grade II* listed building at 61 Whitehall. It was originally constructed with donations from their members in 1896. Thanks to the support of numerous donors, RUSI reached the £10 million budget to proceed with the refurbishment. The building works started in earnest at the end of 2021, with construction managed by Coniston. By early 2023, RUSI aims to return all staff to work in the fully renovated building with modern office space with first-class conference and meeting facilities.

This investment will enable RUSI to fully realise its potential as a leading convening power on critical issues in defence, security and international affairs in the heart of Whitehall.

The brief

Murphy Geospatial was appointed by Coniston to provide environmental monitoring solutions at the RUSI building during site demolition, excavation, and construction work of the refurbishment. A vibration monitoring.

Network was installed at specific locations to monitor the vibration and acceleration of the party walls at the Welsh Office and Banqueting House of the main RUSI building. This is to ensure that all is in accordance to the British Standards. The monitors we deployed offer an extremely high precision and exceptionally stable three axis vibration sensor which reports measurements through a cellular network to a central database daily.

Our work

The works were executed within the allotted time frame with an agreed staged installation of the monitoring equipment. The vibration monitoring was divided in two phases, the baseline monitoring for six weeks and the current monitoring during main contract works. The final outputs from the vibration monitoring are PPV (Peak Particle Velocity), VDV (Vibration Dose Value) and acceleration; synchronised waveform recording on all active channels.

The following was delivered to the client:

◼ The installation of 10 vibration units in every floor fixed on the party walls for baseline monitoring.

◼ The decommission of 10 vibration units.

◼ The installation of 10 vibration units in every floor fixed on the party walls ensuring satisfactory continuous operation for accurate data logging.

Figure 1 – Installation of vibration monitoring sensors in different locations for the baseline monitoring

Figure 2 – Installation of vibration monitoring sensors in different locations

Figure 3 – Existing floor plan (ref: https://www.rusi.org/about/support-rusi/redeveloping-61-whitehall)

The challenges

According to the specifications of the client, the outputs of the vibration monitoring must be not only PPV but also VDV and acceleration. For the acquisition of these, data-specific sensors are required. The extra required records need to be considered before the selection of the appropriate equipment. After our research, two different sensors were tested on site for the accuracy of the final outputs and after calculations, we concluded the optimal sensors for this project.

Our team

Our monitoring team consisted of a monitoring engineer to install the system and a data engineer to setup the online network. We also had a project manager to oversee the process and progress, as well as liaise with the client to ensure everything was installed according to specifications and that the system was ready for recording.

Results

All instrumentation was installed within the agreed timeframe and started transmitting data to our web portal for immediate view of the results. Monitoring of the site is still ongoing.

Contact

For more information on this project, please contact our UK Monitoring team by emailing info@murphygs.com or call us on +44 (0)192 362 4800

Learn more about our Structural Health Monitoring offering here