The Michael Uren Biomedical Engineering Research Hub (or The BmE Hub) is a new £90 million flagship building which forms a key part of Imperial College London’s new White City Campus.
CoxGomyl’s expert design and engineering team were tasked with developing a comprehensive and practical access solution for this important new research and development facility. Across 13 floors and 18,150 square metres of offices and laboratories, over 500 world-leading engineers, scientists and clinicians will work alongside each other, with The BmE Hub conceived as a space to foster collaborative progress on new medical technologies.
The brief called for a single Building Maintenance Unit (BMU) to service the entire building structure. The access solution would need to be capable of overcoming a range of challenges including the geography of the building, with varying heights and sloping surfaces at roof level, as well as the architectural feature of four large chimneys which meant that the BMU could only operate from several dedicated positions.
The BMU is located on the 12th floor and is concealed from sight when not in use by the sloping structure of the roof itself. Travelling on a straight twin track, the BMU is able to traverse between the four chimneys and provide access to the majority of the facade from there. This can only be achieved using a highly-engineered and flexible Building Maintenance Unit. A four-stage telescopic jib delivers an outreach of up to 24 metres, while the parallelogram functionality allows the unit to be lowered out of sight in parked position. The complete building access system is completed by a lift table which safely and reliably transfers the BMU to a working position on the upper levels of the roof to achieve comprehensive coverage.
From project design to maintenance, CoxGomyl’s range of building maintenance systems and services have been developed for efficiency and are renowned worldwide. Get in contact with us for more information.
