Broadway show

Despite this, construction is on course for a planned soft opening at the end of September, with an official opening on 19 October. For m&e contractor Emcor Drake & Scull to achieve its part of the task meant close planning, co-ordination and site-based project teams.

The retail development sits on Fulham Road, a few hundred yards from Chelsea Football Club's stadium. It straddles an existing Underground rail track, which lies halfway between basement and ground level, with a multiplex cinema and supermarket on one side and the main shopping mall on the other.

Emcor won the contract for the co-ordination of shell and core m&e services in the three-storey retail centre and the redevelopment of the rail station services by competitive tender. The Underground work was directly subcontracted to its sister firm Emcor Rail. "Strictly speaking they are our subcontractor, we've sublet the job to them," explains Emcor senior project manager Peter Cole. "But I don't believe that's the way it works. We're all part of Emcor."

This attitude to teamworking was necessary on a project where, although the m&e services for the retail area and the rail operate independently there are necessary overlaps, and interaction between the two teams was essential due to the positioning of the rail track. Cole oversees the installations in both areas, and to help with co-ordination, the Emcor Rail project manager works alongside him in the same site office.

Retail services
Emcor arrived on site in March 2001, with construction starting soon after. Most of its initial work involved planning and development of the services design.

A co-ordinated design indicating services routes was supplied by m&e consulting engineer Roberts and Partners. Site conditions meant that some of these routes had to be altered, and with space for services minimal, as is standard in retail projects, detailed design work was needed before installation could begin.

To do this efficiently a full computer aided design (cad) office was set up on site, with six specialised staff overseen by a cad manager. Cole explains: "You couldn't design the job back at head office. You need to be able to get out on site and our engineers need to be able to sit down with them."

Most of the mechanical plant for the retail development is on the roof of the southern side. The electrical plant is predominantly in the southern basement. Here, an 11 kV supply feeds the landlord's lv panel via two transformers; this mainly serves the mechanical plant and smaller retail units. Two other incoming supplies feed the larger retail spaces, cinema and rail station via separate substations in the northern side.

The first challenge was brought by London Electricity Board (LEB) regulations, which state that cables entering its switchrooms must be a minimum of 400 A. This created the task of splitting the supplies into the levels needed by each tenant before distribution. Emcor designed the cable sizes and containment racks to enable this.

Also an issue was the positioning of the incomers. Cole explains: "There was only the capacity on the southern side to give 11 feeds, and there were around 24 retail units." This meant that additional power had to be transferred from the north side. "The hardest part of the job was to put in the sub-mains because the routes were horrendous to get around the building; it's a strange shape and has the added knock-back of having the rail going through the middle," says Cole. It was not possible to follow a direct route across the rail site as under London Underground Ltd (LUL) regulations this area had to be kept as a separate entity. The solution was to route services around the building under the eaves.

The logistics of distribution stretched further: there are also only two service risers in the building. "In effect," states Cole, "we had one riser to get all the services from basement level up through the building." This meant careful sequencing of services installation was needed to ensure that the job wasn't halted or space problems created for contractors installing the latter systems.

Close planning and co-ordination between the two Emcor teams was also needed at the junction between the rail and retail sides. Some systems are integrated, such as the fire alarms and cctv, so the two teams had to work together to ensure that they satisfied both the client and regulations. Complexities arose here because LUL installations must be made according to its own regulations, which are very specific, and complex. "We're very fortunate that we had a project manager for Rail that used to work for London Underground and actually assisted in the writing of these rules and regulations," stresses Cole. "[Emcor Rail] has also got massive experience from previous LUL projects."

Installation in the rail areas was restricted to times when the trains were not running, as insufficient room was available to work on the platforms while maintaining the minimum platform area under the LUL regulations. This has prolonged the work, since as little as two hours a day have been available for working to allow for safety checks by LUL approved contractors after completion each night.

Innovative thinking was needed to carry out installations to containment runs above the track: temporary access platforms were needed that could not remain during train times. A specialist scaffolding firm was employed to design a system that would brace the rails without affecting them. This had to be built every night work was carried out, and taken down and removed to a back-of-house area before the rail area was repowered.

Planning and logistics
The final project team was larger than expected due mainly to the amount of design development that was needed and the reduced installation time that this gave. An estimated eight to ten additional engineers were employed. "We never really envisaged having such a huge team on the project," explained Cole, "but we've had to react to the conditions once we started getting into the project."

It is written into the tenants' contracts that if the retail units are not handed over on time they are entitled to rent-free periods. Although "hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional works" have been added as the project has been in progress, with 80% of the design variations made in the last few months of the project, the completion date has not altered.

Some of the changes are due to the retail units needing larger electrical capacities than originally planned. "We're within 1% of the maximum power on the job because of all the increases. In the overall scheme there was always going to be 25% spare capacity because you never know what changes you're going to need in the future," states Cole. To counter this additional requirement, a new hv supply is being added.

"The hardest part of the job for us has been planning and co-ordination," stresses Cole. Regular meetings were held with the main contractor, Sir Robert McAlpine, and the subcontractors, who were selected as far as possible from Emcor's approved lists.

Lack of storage space has been a problem throughout, especially as the project draws to a close. For example, the car park areas used initially are no longer available. "Even with bread-and-butter items we're having to have two deliveries a day because there is nowhere to put anything," says Cole. "Hundreds of kilometres of cabling" were installed on the project. At its peak, deliveries of cables were being made on low loaders to meet demands. There is only one entrance to the site, so deliveries are again logistically planned. Prefabrication has been used wherever possible and much of the general pipework was assembled in Emcor's Essex facility. Once open, access planning must continue for the retail deliveries, and a traffic management system is being prepared to cope with this.