Roofing

Enquiry 1
Working at Height
Bringing the Safe Working at Height
Legacy to Life
Here East, the reborn Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre
As the Rio Olympics hoves into view it’s timely to catch-up on the
legacy of the London Olympics in 2012. As one of the biggest
construction projects in Europe, the Olympic Park was a great safety
success with zero fatalities and a below the norm injury rate. No
sooner had the last Paralympic event been completed, the £6 billion
transformation began to evolve the sporting complex into a
residential, cultural and technological centre of excellence,
showcasing the best of British innovation.
Back in 2012 over 100,000 hours of live action were broadcast from the
Press and Broadcasting Centre at the heart of the Olympic Park which
is now known as Here East. The development is designed to use the
connectivity and facilities created for the world’s press and build on it
to offer the most advanced digital infrastructure in Europe. Today it is
home to a sports broadcast station and a technology and creative
nucleus for East London. However, a considerable amount of
remodelling and restructuring was necessary to transform the building
from a temporary base for the world’s media to a permanent home for
a host of companies including BT Sport, which broadcasts 24/7 from
its 80,000 square feet production hub.
Contracted to provide working from height solutions during this
transformation was HCL Safety Ltd. The company was responsible for
installing the fall protection systems on many of the Park’s buildings
and structures but the Broadcast centre roof area presented its very
own challenges.
challenge of the project was that a number of extremely large air
handling units were sited on the plant deck of the building, and had
to be removed. These were absolutely colossal - each as big as a
house - and with more than 20 of them situated across the plant
area, the danger was that workforce removing these air handling
units would be exposed to a fall hazard during the process.”
Loadings
A fall protection system was fixed to the main steelwork of the plant
area above the air handling units. However, the span exceeded the
standard 60m so following consultation with the Latchways
technical department, additional wire supports were installed
perpendicular to the main span to reduce the span, free fall distance
and potential loadings.
Many lessons were learnt from the zero accident achievement at the
Olympic Park that were disseminated by the Olympic Delivery
Authority [http://bit.ly/1HZiWYO] through the industry. While
imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, by treating each
project’s safety requirement as a unique challenge that needs a
unique solution it should be possible to emulate the safety success
of the Olympic Park.
Here East under Construction - Extensive building works have
transformed the Olympic Park into a permanent cultural and technical
hub as well as a world-class sporting facility.
Matt Lines, Area Manager spoke of the logistics of keeping workers at
height safe on one of the country’s most famous parks: “The main
Each project’s safety requirements must be treated as a unique challenge.
Latchways’ Head of Sales Jonathan Seymour said: “Everyone knows,
projects aren’t constrained by what’s ‘normal’. It’s exciting to be
involved with headliner projects like the Olympics but each project’s
safety challenges must be assessed individually. It’s good to rise to
the unique challenges presented by the Olympics, the O2 or the
brand new Birmingham New Street Rail station in the knowledge
that we have helped these projects to achieve zero accidents. ”
Page 14