Up and In at Canary Wharf

The Mechanical Movements team were in London’s Canary Wharf last week, completing a coil replacement in the water tower of an iconic bank building.

This complex lift required skill and precision as we raised and lowered all the components almost vertically, using specialist lifting equipment and tackle, ensuring we kept safely clear of the structural steel of the building.

We needed to prepare the site before the lift, by stripping the water tower, removing the roof purlins and the existing water tower components to gain access to the coils.

The scale of the lift required that the surrounding roads on the south colonnade were closed on Friday night, with traffic and pedestrians diverted. We then secured a safe work area with Heras fencing, ready to route in a 500tonne mobile crane onto the site. We used seven flatbed lorries in total to deliver the equipment for the crane and the replacement coils.

Once we had removed the old coils from the site and positioned the new ones into place, we swiftly deconstructed the crane and reopened the road. Our operatives then later returned to reinstate the roof purlins and rebuild the water tower, ready for pressure testing.