Rising 128 m above Moorgate in the City of London, 20 Ropemaker Street will punctuate Islington’s skyline with its striking truncated design. By creating 450,000 sq ft of Grade A, BREEAM ‘Outstanding’-certified offices, with 10,000 sq ft of premium retail space and over 20,000 sq ft of external terraces, the completed scheme will become the London Borough of Islington’s largest ever project.
Working alongside developer, Great Elm Assets Ltd and principal contractor, Skanska, our team are providing structural, geotechnical and environmental consultancy services for the £240m scheme. We also liaised with Network Rail, Crossrail, London Underground and party wall consultants to ensure the smooth delivery of the development at this bustling City of London location.
To facilitate demolition of the existing buildings, our geotechnical specialists developed a detailed ground engineering model which was integrated with the piling and structural BIM model to provide predicted ground movements and the impact on third party assets.
Magic Circle multinational law firm, Linklaters, have secured 310,000 sq ft of prime office space at 20 Ropemaker to create their new HQ. Our structures team worked alongside Old Park Lane Management, CO-RE, Great Elm Assets Ltd and Make architects to incorporate Linklaters’ requirements into both the building contract and enabling works, bringing all required enhancements up to RIBA Stage 4 in a very short timeframe, protecting the scheduled completion of the scheme in mid-2023.
Our infrastructure and environment specialists successfully closed out all demolition and enabling works planning conditions relating to Network Rail, Crossrail, London Underground and Thames Water. To deliver this, we planned and executed a ‘submission and approval’ strategy to suit the construction programme. Submissions for these key approvals were based on our iterative foundation design, responding to specific structural and geotechnical aspects. The successful completion of this process resulted in significant savings for the piling scheme, reaping benefits in both costs and programme.
Our team were also heavily involved with the design development of the superstructure, with our structures specialists taking a flexible approach to effectively address a variety of procurement and fabrication challenges. Working collaboratively with Skanska and their preferred steel contractor, we incorporated changes to the superstructure framing, harnessing the contractor’s specialist fabrication processes. Construction programme benefits were made by adapting the form, constituent pieces and connections of the four Vierendeel south facing ‘ladder frames’ which provide lateral stability for the new structure.
Client: Old Park Lane Management
Architect: MAKE
