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Despite Plant Heavy Lift The Show Must Go On

A Hills Electrical and Mechanical product story

Edited by the Buildingtalk editorial team Jul 23, 2004

Business as usual for Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden despite the presence of a giant mobile telescopic crane brought in by Hills Electrical and Mechanica to lift new standby generators.

It was business as usual for the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden at the weekend - despite the presence of a giant mobile telescopic crane brought in by Hills Electrical and Mechanical plc to lift new standby generators into place at the nearby BT Covent Garden.

Thanks to careful planning by Hills, the Royal Opera House's two performances of Tosca went ahead, despite the closure of a 200 m stretch of Bow Street for a whole weekend.

The road closures around one of the West End of London's busiest tourist destinations were necessary to allow the giant crane to be assembled using a second crane before manoeuvring the generators into position.

The crane was fitted with a 24 m main boom plus a 44 m luffing boom and balanced with a 76 tonne counterweight to enable it to reach over the 10-storey BT building and ease the two new 15 tonne generators through two small wells into the basement and remove three old diesel generators.

The two new 1.1 MW generator sets are being installed by Hills as part of a £2 million upgrade of the power supply for BT Covent Garden.

The project has also involved the installation of 11kV switchgear, a packaged substation and LV control gear to cope with higher power demand within the building.