McMullen Facades wins £18m Southbank Place contract

The £18m contract will see the McMullen team deliver an innovative off-site solution to the Patel Taylor designed tower using a bespoke unitised bay window system that has been developed in conjunction with Hueck and manufactured at McMullen Facades’ factory in Portadown.

The project will also see McMullen collaborating with Laing O’Rourke’s Expanded Group. Huge precast panels will be manufactured to accommodate two bay windows with Juliet balconies and these will then be installed by McMullen in Laing O’Rourke’s Expanded off-site facility.  McMullen described this as “the ultimate in off-site manufacturing”.

All of the precast panels will be placed directly onto the building structure by tower cranes, taking just four days to complete an entire floor. Various smaller precast panels with screens, vents and sliding doors also make up the scope of works.

In addition, the project will include traditional ground floor screens with entrance doors and a plant screen on the roof. The McMullen team have developed a new system that unitises the plant room screen in order to mitigate some of the risk of working at height. The system takes the assembly work off site and the small amount of on-site fixing work is designed to take place away from the leading edge.

With McMullen having already played a key role in the initial design stages, production is now under way and installation will begin on site before the end of 2017.

Southbank Place is being developed by Braeburn Estates, which is a joint venture between Canary Wharf Group and Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company. [See our previous report here.]

The façade contract is the latest to be awarded to McMullen Facades by Canary Wharf Contractors and follows the specialist’s recent appointment to deliver the façade for a new 42-storey residential development which forms part of Canary Wharf’s New District regeneration. McMullen and Lakesmere also previously worked with Canary Wharf Contractors to deliver the cladding and glazing package at the Canary Wharf Crossrail station.

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