About the Project

Elizabeth Tower Restoration, London

Repair and conservation of Big Ben and its tower, completed in 263 weeks.

On Nicholas Sturge’s project to restore the stone and cast-iron fabric of the parliament building’s tower, introduce modern services, install two new lifts and refurbish the Great Clock itself, the biggest task was not in fact any of these things. The most fiendish challenge of all was to erect a 96m-tall scaffold on a 12m by 12m footprint without any mechanical ties whatsoever into the grade I-listed building.

His solution was a complex array of large steel support trusses sitting on steel towers and 32 piles around the base of the tower. By also installing an automated runway on the scaffold descending to a 60m-high loading gantry, Nick was then able to remove the cast-iron gutters, each weighing around 600kg, for repair, along with the cast-iron roof tiles.

4D building information modelling and asset tagging were further innovations by Nick. The BIM allowed service clash detection and helped to engage stakeholders through graphic depictions of complex work sequences. Meanwhile every heritage asset removed and repaired off-site – roof tiles, gutters, clock hands and clock parts – was given a unique asset ID that was linked into the BIM model, allowing its location and movements to be tracked.

The quality of the works was impeccable. Take the glass for the four clock faces. Nick visited the glass-making factory to review the process and quality control. The glass was then hand-picked, with each hand-blown sheet placed in front of a lightbox that replicated the lighting conditions in the restored faces.