SCS Group completes London Transport Museum work

A Smoke Control Services product story

Edited by the Buildingtalk editorial team Jul 24, 2009

The SCS Group has completed work on the multi-million pound London Transport Museum, based in Covent Garden, installing passive ventilation and smoke control systems.

The firm won the GBP70,000 contract as part of a major two-year project to upgrade the two-storey Victorian listed building, awarded by MandE contractors Imtech Meica.

The museum explores the heritage of London its transport system, and the stories of the people who have travelled, and worked in the city over the last 200 years.

Its collection includes outstanding examples of transport vehicles and rolling stock as well as posters, signs, uniforms, photos, maps and drawings.

The age of the building and its listed status provided the SCS Group's six-strong team that worked on the project over a 12 month period with some unique challenges.

Engineers had to devise new techniques and products to ensure the passive ventilation system worked efficiently whilst maintaining the architectural integrity of the building.

SCS fitted actuators to over a hundred Victorian windows, developing new brackets and chains to enable the building management system to control the automatic synchronised opening and closing of the temperature sensitive windows, which are situated high above the museum's exhibits in its roof.

Robert Davies, SCS Group senior project manager, said, "Working on a listed building is always challenging and fitting actuators to 104 Victorian windows was demanding because of their age and condition.

The iron window surrounds were very hard in some parts but soft in others and the high carbon content made it difficult to drill through.

To overcome this we devised new bracket settings and mountings that proved highly effective while remaining sympathetic to the building's listed status.

"The passive ventilation system will ensure maximum comfort for the museum's staff and visitors while reducing the building's energy and maintenance costs and helping the environment.

We installed a natural smoke ventilation system that utilised high level windows fitted with actuators for extraction and low level glazed louvers for inlet".