Paddington Cube

Erith Contractors Ltd was awarded the contract for the demolition and subsequence basement construction of Paddington Cube project. The project involved a 2-storey basement in the southwest past of the site and a 3-storey basement in the northeast part of the site.

As part of Erith’s in-house engineering consultancy, Swanton Consulting has had significant involvement regarding the temporary works required to enable the excavation and subsequent basement construction.

As part of the scope, it was the assessment of the proposed top down as an effective restraint to the perimeter secant pile walls and the design of the required propping scheme in the 2-storey area where the proposed sequence was a bottom up sequence. The location and the existence of LUL and NWR tunnel directly below the proposed basement imposed additional restraints in terms of allowable movement criteria.

Swanton Consulting worked closely with the piling contractor to specify sequence of works, deflection criteria and type of restraints. A sophisticated 3D FE analysis was done in house which was following the site activities in order to verify the initial assumptions and back analyses imposed stresses on the structural elements. The FE analysis was compared with real time monitoring and calibrated accordingly.

Apart from the mainly assessment of the excavation and the required propping scheme in the bottom up section of the basement, major designs included the re – design of the street level slab to take the imposed loadings from a marketing suite that was requested by the client and the design of an extensive steel traffic platform for deliveries and other essential site activities.