Swiss Centre construction

[abigailbrady]

Swiss Centre construction site 2009-01-07 Haven't posted a Swiss Centre picture for a while. It finished demolition some months ago, and has now entered the construction phase. There are two large blue cranes on site (you can see the bases of them in frame). Today's new arrival is the upright grey thing in between them. We're not quite sure what it is. They got it a certain amount of assembled and then seem to have taken it apart again, so presumably they are Doing It Wrong. The truck at the bottom has the remainder of it. We suspect it may be a concrete pourer - any ideas?

(apologies for the very poor shot, on cameraphone and it is VERY COLD on the roof)

Because the building is now not there any more, and it's winter and some of the trees are out of the way, we've noticed we can see the Natwest Tower and the Gherkin from the top floor. I managed to see quite a few more city towers from the roof but didn't stop to identify them.

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a concrete pourer - the tubes give it away.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The grey thing?

It's not a structural member (those will be steel I-Beams or square concrete pillars) and it's very thick-walled for a rising main, even for a skyscraper. Your guess that it's a concrete pump is a good one, although it's actually far too large a pipe for that: I think it's the central post of a pillar crane.

It's placed right by the street-level loading bay, and would be used as a dedicated crane for unloading equipment and materials. The big tower crane is used for moving materials around the site, and could probably do the job just as well, so the installation of a dedicated loading-bay crane suggests that it's a long project with a lot of materials and equipment to shift - that, or severe restrictions on the use of their on-street loading space.

[katsmeat.livejournal.com]

It interesting they're going ahead in the current economic climate.

In Norwich, there are a bunch of empty sites. I'm guessing because losing-the-interest-on-the-cost-an-empty-site is better than losing-the-interest-on-the-cost-a-site-plus-the-construction-cost-of-an-empty-building.

Obviously, central London will always be a different universe in terms of land cost and the chances of getting tennents. Regardless of the economic situation.

[bothwill.livejournal.com]

It sure looks like a concrete pourer but it can also be a man lift as far as I can see. Looking forward for more updates, there are some interesting things going one there, we may learn something too. In fact I was an intermediate once in an equipment rental (http://www.ahern.com/) once, I may help with few details.