BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly

Project Details

The regeneration of BAFTA’s London headquarters in Piccadilly involves the comprehensive refurbishment and expansion of this Grade II listed building to create a flexible and state of the art space. The scheme includes a top floor extension to create a new members’ area which requires the raising and re-integration of two large Victorian rooflights and decorative plasterwork. The new design of the rooftop spaces will showcase these listed rooflights which have been concealed for 40 years. This aspect of the refurbishment will reinstate the original design of the 1883 galleries of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.

People

Murphy Geospatial has been appointed by Knight Harwood to complete environmental monitoring at BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly during site demolition and construction works.

Vibration units have been installed to measure Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) of the building at specific locations.

Noise units have been installed to measure the average sound level in each measurement period (currently 5 mins) in decibel (dB).

Dust units have been installed to record PM10 concentrations of the air quality in µg/m3 over contiguous 15-minute intervals. The units have been installed at the 1st and 4th level.

Process

Engage

Early engagement was key to understand exactly what the client required. A site visit before, following with a detailed discussion and a full review of the specification were critical.

Plan

Careful planning was required to execute the site works always in communication with the client. For the installation of all the monitoring equipment access was arranged to the site, every time after the permission of the client due to the sensitivity of the project.

Mainly, the site visits are for maintenance purposes of the units once per 40 days in average.

Execute

The works were executed within the allotted time frame with an agreed staged installation of the monitoring.

The following was delivered to the client:

(1) The installation of 2no. AvaTrace M80 Tri axial sensors for vibration monitoring.

(2) The installation of 2no. Aeroqual Dust Sentry Monitors for dust monitoring.

(3) The installation of 2no. SON EM2010 Sound Level Monitors for noise monitoring.

Data collected for the baseline monitoring period information will be treated as the baseline data (background monitoring) where the common trend can be observed before any work is carried out within the zone of influence.

Real-time data are recorded automatically 24/7. Trigger alerts have been set for each unit as per client’s specification in combination with the background monitoring.

Review

Expectations were met and the client is satisfied with the weekly deliveries, during site demolition and construction works. Moreover, extra daily reports have been issued to be presented in meetings with sub-contractors of our client. Many times, as per client’s request the trigger levels have been revised. Moreover, we faced challenges during the project, which affected the monitoring as power disconnection on site, water ingress, complains from tenants close to the site, trigger alerts from external sources and non-site related works, however we managed to overcome them efficiently.