Tate and guile

Bankside Power Station has had a face lift. The huge building, complete with 99-m-tall chimney, has stood on the south bank of the Thames playing industrial foil to the religious statement that is St Paul's for as long as many can remember. And it's not going anywhere.

Bankside has been converted into the Tate Gallery of Modern Art. Halls that once contained vast oil-fired turbines will now house works of art.

The idea of Bankside being used as a gallery came about in 1994 and in 1995 the Millennium Commission announced the allocation of a £50 million grant for the conversion. The site was secured in 1996 thanks to another grant of £12 million by English Partnerships. Work could start.

Creating the world's largest modern art museum is no mean feat. At 11 000 m², with a cavernous six storey entrance hall, the scheme presented some unusual installation problems for both electrical and mechanical contractors T Clarke and Sulzer Infra.

However, installing equipment in the huge turbine halls wasn't as difficult as you may imagine. Joe Forgie, project manager with T Clarke, said: "We had large hydraulic platforms for a lot of the work and scaffolding was also used. The difficult work came with more intricate operations like interfacing services in the technical walls in the galleries." These walls house equipment such as lighting control for the galleries.

To give a real idea of the project size, T Clarke has installed somewhere in the region of 10 000 m of cable tray on the project. Five tray runs skirt the perimeter of the 120-m-long-by-40-m-wide building on each of the seven floors.

The supply to the the mass of cabling sitting on these trays comes via two 2·8 MVA transformers. All hv and lv switchgear is supplied by ABB. Standby power to the tune of 500 kVA comes from AVK SEG.

As well as gallery space, the new Tate will house an auditorium for conferences and film screenings, an education centre, gift shops, an information centre and a cafe. A restaurant with views across London is also a feature. It will be housed in the two-storey glazed extension on the roof of the power station. Two million visitors are expected each year once the gallery opens in May 2000.

Everything about the project is big, apart from the amount of time allowed to carry out the work. T Clarke has had just 14 months to carry out over £6 million worth of work. And as you read this practical completion is less than a week away.

Sulzer Infra, the mechanical contractor, is in the same boat as T Clarke. Well over £3 million of work has been carried out in double quick time. Tony Merrell, Sulzer Infra senior foreman, says: "It's a mammoth job with people crawling over it like ants. This is possibly our most prestigious project in London, even Europe, but it's just basic plumbing really, no matter how sexy it looks in the end.

"The interesting and problematic part is the size of the pipework and the heights it is installed at. You can be working at over 10 m above the ground. Everything has to be done off scissor lifts." Merrell's "basic plumbing" includes air conditioning to all areas including galleries, the cafe and restaurant and a computer room, drainage, heating, wet services and emergency equipment. And, it's all on a grand scale.

Two main plant areas, situated alongside the restaurant in the glazed top storeys and the site of much of Sulzer Infra's work, are the building's heart. Its brains, however, the building energy management system (bems), has been supplied and installed by Landis & Staefa at a cost of around £900 000. Sulzer Infra has been issued with associated equipment such as three-port valves and plant on/off switches. Once installed, these are linked to the bems.

Merrell says: "A good method statement and good site management take the problems out of working on a project like this." And with only a short time to go before completion he seems to be right. The Tate hasn't had the logistical and industrial relations breakdowns which have plagued other major London projects. Some might even say that the respective management teams have transformed building services into an art form.