Chelsea Harbour

Chelsea Harbour is a mixed-use development in Central London, situated on the north bank of the River Thames, in the Sands End area. It lies within the eastern boundary of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and on the southwestern boundary of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Designed by Architects Moxley, Jenner & Partners, - and built from April, 1986 and largely completed in 2 years - by P & O & Globe Investment Trust, through their subsidiary, Chelsea Harbour Ltd., - their Project Management Contractors were their former subsidiary, Bovis Homes Group, tasked to Bovis' "V" Division, the development is now owned by Compco Holdings Ltd. It contains luxury apartments, a luxury hotel named Wyndham Grand, and offices and showrooms, surrounding a small marina.

The Story of the construction of this unique "village development", - the largest construction project in London until "Canary Wharf", - deserves more detail than it has had here previously - until my additions today - so for the benefit of interested persons in later years, I'm adding additional data about this record-breaking building project, - since I was one of the Senior Project Managers, - (I oversaw the "shell & core" construction of 3 of the proposed 16 buildings).

Originally named "Chelsea Garden Market", of almost 66,000 sq.ft gross internal space, and identifiable by the three large glazed domes over the galleria, - the showrooms are now known as the "Chelsea Harbour Design Centre", and are London's main focus for manufacturers and distributors of home ware and interiors. The offices are in 2 buildings known as "Harbour Yard" and "The Design Centre East" that are marketed by Frost Meadowcroft and Edward Charles & Partners; occupiers including Guess.

"Chelsea Harbour" was built on the site of a ex-British Rail Coal Yard and Victorian-era railway Coaling Dock, the whole 20-acre Site lying between the River Thames and Chelsea Creek (Counter's Creek that has its source in Kensal Green Cemetery and crossed the Fulham Road at a sandy ford, that gave the name to Stamford Bridge enters the Thames just north of Chelsea Harbour), - and bounded to the west by an "active" British Rail line on an embankment; - and was the biggest single Construction Project the United Kingdom had seen for decades. As originally designed, there were to be 16* buildings in all, of between 5 and 9 storeys save for the "Belvedere Tower", - with "secure" underground parking spaces for 2,000 vehicles covering 14 acres. (Note* - only 12 buildings were completed due to a downturn in the UK economy during the construction period.)

The Belvedere": - Bovis set many new UK and International Records for the speed of construction, well-reported in the British Trade Paper "Construction News", the London "Evening Standard",as well as many international Construction Industry publications of the time. For example, the 18-storey "Belvedere" tower Team managed to pour a new floor every 4 days, with pre-fabricated sub-sections of Rebar built on the ground using "go; no-go"Jigs, using a quick-curing high-strength (50Newton) concrete far stronger than anything generally used in UK Construction at the time, flat soffits with no "downstand beams", and pre-fabricated, steel, wheeled jack-up Forms placed-, removed-, and re-positioned by the building's tower crane (with the aid of temporary-support platforms cantilevered off the side of the structure), erected in what would become one of the Belvedere's lift shafts. The Tower "topped-out" within 6 months of the start of Work.

A Forest of Tower Cranes : - At one point the Site was equipped with 14 Tower Cranes, (so positioned that each crane's operating radius intersected with that of at least one other), - more than had been employed on any Construction Site in the UK up to that Date; and had approximately 1500 personnel onsite most of the time, Management and Operatives. Work on-site continued "round-the-clock", 6-days a week - with Main sub-Contractors mostly choosing to work in 2 twelve-hour-long shifts. Project Management staff were always on-call, even on a Sunday; - Bovis put a "Duty Rota" in place to ensure full-time coverage.

Senior Site-management Organisation; - Bovis deployed from Harrow two Senior Directors to be resident on-site, having "overall Joint-management responsibility", - one for Procurement (Ron Davie, if memory serves me), and one for Construction (Frank Reed - who'd been almost solely responsible for building Bovis' long-standing construction-connection with British Home Stores). Both were very "hands-on", and had an incredible grasp of the construction details. For ease and speed of on-site communications, Senior Management were provided with personal "walky-talkies" on a site-dedicated multi-channel Radio Net. The Architects and the Structural- and Services- Engineers were required to maintain large offices on-site, and to assign individual personnel specifically to each building; and were subordinate to Bovis Senior Managers for each Section. To keep pace with the issue of revised construction Drawings, Bovis set up a Print Shop on-site, so that revised Details reached each building's Construction Team with a minimum of delay.

The Site was administratively divided into 14 'semi-autonomous' Sections, drawing on a common Group of approved Main sub-Contractors; - each Section with a Contract Value of approximately £12/14Million (at 1986-89 costs) operated as a semi-independent Construction Management Contract within the whole Project; and all Sections save three containing just one of the Buildings. The three other Sections - two were the "Harbour & Lock" Section; and the "Roadways, River Walls & Walkways, & Underground Services" Section, - and the third Section contained "Chelsea Garden Market", "Chambers", and the then-un-named Hotel.

Bovis recruited worldwide to find Senior Contract Managers to oversee the completion of each Section; this worldwide recruitment found Senior Managers of such quality of experience that one had come from overseeing the construction of a Palace for the Sultan of Brunei. Another was lured away from an enormous Construction Project in North Africa. A third was recruited from Jersey, fresh from successfully managing the largest Construction Project in the history of the island, which Project had been funded by the Island Government and was politically 'very sensitive'!

Construction: - When construction began within 3-weeks of Planning Permission being granted on April 15th, 1986, the whole Site was derelict, - the Lock was also derelict needing new Lock-gates and a complete reconstruction to be functional again; and with the Coal Dock - both had been infilled with contaminated materials, - which the Contractor had to re-excavate and dispose-of. The Design required the Contractor to reduce the size of the Dock by 1/3rd from the North end - which would then become the 75-berth Marina; and to re-construct the Lock Chamber, lock-gates, and cill. Within 12 months - work on-site began in early May, 1986, -, the Contractor had excavated the dock, constructed a new North wall, re-puddled the dock floor, renovated the Lock, - and in April, 1987 held a "commissioning Champagne Party" on two pontoons in the newly-flooded "marina" for all the Staff & Senior Operatives directly involved.

In that year - April 1986 to April 1987, the Bovis Construction Team had clocked-up some impressive figures:

• 2,000 piles had been sunk over 30 metres down to the London Clay without problems ;
• 250,000 cu.Metres of earth had been excavated and removed from the site;
• 55 acres of floor space had been built, using 70,000 cubic metres of concrete* and 8,000 tons of steel; one continuous concrete pour on Chelsea Garden Market's foundations totalled over 400 cu.Metres, with Mixer Trucks queueing-up for several hundred yards along Townmead Road. (Note* - to ensure an uninterrupted cement Supply for the concrete, 5,000 tons of cement were stockpiled in a hulk moored in the London Docks; and a Concrete Supply Company was bought outright, to devote priority of supply to the Chelsea Harbour Project):
• the reinforced structural concrete frame of "Chelsea Crescent" (which contained 64 apartments as originally designed) was built iin just 8 weeks;
• 3 new bridges had been completed onsite, including the largest "thrust bore tunnel" in Europe (over Townmead Road), which was hydraulically-jacked into position under an operating rail line in a single weekend - using a well-known Brand of washing-up Liquid as the main lubricant on "Visqueen" and Teflon slideways;
• two buildings had been completed to "shell & core" status, and the interior spaces were already being occupied by the Contractors of incoming tenants;
• a further eight buildings were under construction including "Chambers" and "Chelsea Garden Market";

The marina itself is not used commercially but contains luxury yachts and speedboats, and can be accessed from the Thames at high tide. The Lock availability was indicated by a huge hollow sphere rising-&-dropping on a mast topping The "Belvedere" -, and connected to a Tide Gauge by the Lock Gate giving into the Thames. Judging from the present Google Earth view in November, 2012, the Development's Owners have apparently decided to reduce the number of available berths from the 1986-planned 75-, to around 50 places

All the buildings - save for the Hotel - were built as "shell & core" Contracts, - with Tenants leasing their spaces from Chelsea Harbour Ltd. through their Letting Agents, Town & City Properties (Development), and Savills, - and then commissioning their own Contractors for the internal finishings, once each building was wind and weather-tight, and connected to the external Services.

Bovis project-managed the construction of the Hotel from piling-level to roadway-level, and the remainder of the structure above-ground was completed by a Client who had concluded a long Lease with Chelsea Harbour Ltd.

Chelsea Harbour is close to Kings Road, Chelsea and it is reputed to be the residence of a number of UK and international celebrities. The nearby Harbour Club is a fitness and tennis club which owes much fame to its patronage by Diana, Princess of Wales.

An adjoining, large scale development is being planned on the site of Lots Road power station.

A horse named after the development competed in the 2008 & 2009 Grand Nationals.