Thursday October 13, 2022
McGee, a specialist engineering contractor delivering high profile, complex engineering projects, is pleased to announce that it has won Temporary Works Initiative of the Year at the 2022 British Construction Industry Awards for its work at The Acre, Covent Garden.
McGee tackled a number of complex challenges throughout the scheme to show the potential for construction engineering innovation to unlock RetroFirst projects and preserve embodied carbon. McGee’s innovation enabled the reduction of horizontal propping to a single connecting level. Combined with rooftop-mounted cranes, this hugely simplified 10 storeys of demolition and construction, eliminating interruptions for prop installation and shortening programme and freed crane time. Further to this McGee’s work delivered benefits to programme, cost and safety, as well as significantly reducing the embodied carbon of the temporary works by 88%.
Seb Fossey, Managing Director, McGee said:
“We are delighted to receive this award as an acknowledgement of the team’s industry leading innovation and expertise. Full credit must go to the project team who have proven their ability to deliver quality value-engineered options to clients.
“The Acre at 90 Long Acre gave McGee the opportunity to showcase our best-in-class complex engineering solutions at a high-profile site in central London. We look forward to continuing to innovate and lead the industry.”
Liam Bond, Platform said:
“Congratulations to the whole of the McGee team. Hopefully this is the first of many awards for the scheme, but McGee are first past the post on this occasion and set the pace for others to follow!”
The Judges’ comments:
“This innovative designed solution challenged the initially proposed concepts for the building’s structural temporary condition during the re-development phase.
It was developed by fully understanding the design brief and working in collaboration with the Permanent Works designers.
This elegant outcome combines the expertise of the Temporary Works Design being team with lateral innovative use of solutions used for other types of temporary works.
A greater part of these Temporary Works have been considered so they can be re-used in future works.
This innovative outcome is an example of specialist teams being empowered to collaborate to produce an engineering solution that benefits the Client, Deconstruction and then Re-Construction. With re-purposing of existing structures becoming commonplace to reduce environmental impact this project sets an example for what is possible.”