Lyndon SGB has been awarded a Lendlease Health, Safety & Wellbeing Champion winners accolade – for the hybrid access scaffolding and hoists solutions on the Manchester Town Hall project.
Lyndon SGB Regional Manager, Jon Cooke said: “This is a once in a lifetime scaffolding and access project. There’s never been anything like it and to win this award presented by Project Director Paul Candelent is an absolute honour and fitting tribute to all the Lyndon SGB and Taylor’s Hoists by BrandSafway men and women working on the project.”
Lyndon SGB and Taylor’s Hoists are proud to have been chosen as the external scaffolding and hoists contractors for the £300 million refurbishment and partial restoration of the Grade 1-listed Manchester Town Hall by main contractor Lendlease – one of the largest construction sites in Europe and currently the UK’s biggest single scaffolding contract.
The Lyndon SGB scaffolding and hoists from Taylor’s Hoists are in situ to give access to all elevations on the #OurTownHall renovation from December 2019 to December 2023 – allowing Lendlease contractors to access 34 chimneys, the three main towers (the main Albert Square clock tower, Cooper St tower and Princess St spire) and the rest of the structure requiring renovation works.
Vast temporary roofs covering all existing roofs are also being provided – making up more than 10,000m2 of weather protection. And there are hundreds of access platforms totalling 22,000m2 and multiple combined scaffold staircases totalling 450m in height – enough to reach the top of the Empire State building (448.7m)!
The highly complex scaffolding works have been designed in-house using resources from across the BrandSafway group. Four design engineers; one UK based, one in Australia and two in Holland worked together to design the intricate solutions – with the temporary roof and complex sections being designed in 3D.
The scaffolding erection is being carried out by more than 50 Lyndon SGB scaffolders, working on more than 200 scaffold structures – independents, birdcages, beam sections, staircases, chimney scaffolds, and temporary roofing – with a total weight of approximately 3700T.
There is a full perimeter independent access scaffold that is two bays wide from the building face; with the inner bay forming the working platform and the outer bay used as a buttress/braced bay, where all the vertical ledger bracing is fitted to allow the inner working bay to be braceless – offering unrestricted access for all trades to work safely.
Additionally, there are three courtyards to the inner grounds of the iconic town hall – all with birdcage scaffolds giving access to all elevations and a fully decked top platform at 25m high. These courtyard scaffolds fill an area of approximately 19,500 cubic meters.
Meanwhile, towering over Albert Square, our scaffolding for the main clock tower is up to a height of 87m and will feature 40 scaffold lifts, when completed.
Fifteen of these clock tower lifts are supported from a complex beam arrangement to the perimeter spanning over the roof of the main building. These in turn are supported by heavy-duty towers to the four corners – each supporting a load of approximately 300kN.
To minimise working at height and manual handling, the beam sections to each elevation were all built on the ground and craned into position – each section made up of eight lines of beams spanning 15m and weighing 4T.
And to minimise wind loading on the building, the access scaffold to the clock tower spire will be built to the profile of the spire, which is an octagonal cone, 20m high on the top of the clock tower. This is a very complex scaffold to build – requiring some of our most experienced scaffolders to complete and expert design engineers to calculate.
Additionally, the complex triangular shape and profile of this historically important building along with many of its fine architectural features (statues, gargoyles and ornate stonework) have made the design and erection of the scaffold a challenge and great responsibility.
