Keltbray is progressing with enabling works on a major addition to the British Library to the north of the existing building.
The scheme – for clients Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan – will provide additional galleries and learning facilities for the library as well as commercial space for the area’s knowledge quarter.
Keltbray is delivering enabling works inluding pile probing for the secant wall, site clearance, service diversions and temporary drainage.
Speaking about the project in a video published on the firm’s website, Keltbray operations director Joe Darcy said the firm would be salvaging all the materials during the works, including paving, bricks, slabs and coping stones.
He said: “We have to take them off carefully, clean them, shrink wrap them and put them on the pallet and take them away to our yard in Uxbridge for reuse in five years.”
Darcy added that logistics on site was challenging due to the site and neighbouring building owners, which include the Francis Crick Institute. He said the latter presented an issue of electromagnetic interference “which is one we haven’t come across before”.
Keltbray also has constraints around accessing the site, with large loads of materials having to be transported after 7pm the wrong way down the nearby Midland Road (a one-way system) with a police escort.
The project is designed by international architectural practice RSHP and engineer Arup, and the construction manager for the scheme is Mace Construct.
