Park Tower Hotel

Occupying one of London’s most prestigious locations, the 5-star Park Tower Hotel is situated alongside luxury goods shops, high-end restaurants and exclusive residential properties.

The hotel operators decided to extend and revamp their ground floor entrances and first floor podium to house a new Nusr-Et Steakhouse.

De Group Contracting’s scope of works involved the creation of the new restaurant area, plus an additional roof garden finished to a watertight shell and core ready for fit out by the restaurant team. These works included:

• demolition
• scenic lift
• piling
• feature staircase
• concrete works
• MEP services
• roof coverings
• stone external cladding
• screeds
• glazed shopfronts
• glazed balustrading
• external doors.

Taking place during a period of significant construction work in the Knightsbridge area, the project was constrained by limited access to the south side of the site. As a result, a restricted access piling rig was used for the foundations of the restaurant columns, enabling easier access through the surrounding construction works.

The client’s requirement to keep the hotel fully operational throughout the works presented an additional challenge. Accordingly, works to each of the main entrances were phased, with noise attenuating hoardings installed around the working areas to minimise any disruption to guests. Strict health, safety and traffic management measures were also implemented to ensure that members of the public were kept safely away from any potential hazards.

Our sister company Deconstruct provided the piling works on this project. Due to the severely restricted access issues, this piling project involved the design and installation of fifteen 300mm diameter case and auger piles to depths of up to 26m. Piles were grouted using a site batched sand/cement grout, which was mixed and pumped by a colloidal CX4/10 mixer.

The original Park Tower developers appeared to have used the surrounding area to dispose of construction waste. As a result, unexpected obstructions were an unforeseen, severe and repeated challenge, with reinforced concrete, road plates and steel beams encountered at various depths of up to 6m. This took its toll on both the drill rig and the equipment, with some 75 hours of unexpected obstruction drilling experienced. The successful maintenance of a steady supply of new tungsten carbide tipped cutting shoes and auger teeth was fundamental to the continuity of uninterrupted site operations.

The depth to clay was also a significant 11m, calling for the considerable torque of the Hutte 203 to install but, with previous experience of piling in this location, these conditions were anticipated in the production rates factored into the tender.