The Shard – Legacy of innovation

London

Case Studies in Project Management - QUAL 11016

Course Name: MSc Project Management

Institute Name: University of The West of Scotland

Student Name: Erdem Gencbay

Student ID: B00660347

November 2021

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 Abstract

The Shard team commenced work in March 2009 at the heart of London’s economic center next to the
London Bridge Station. This Case study concentrates on the timeframe and innovative aspect of
construction and keeping within the timeframe. This requires all stakeholders involve in the project to
work as a one team and some innovative thinking. This approach a world first in such a tall
construction saved more than three months of construction time and kept the build cost below £450m.

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 Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................4

2.0 Stakeholders ................................................................................................................................4

3.0 Obstructions ................................................................................................................................5

4.0 Construction History ...................................................................................................................6

5.0 Project Management ...................................................................................................................6

6.0 Project Management Programmes ..............................................................................................7

7.0 Quality and Risk Management....................................................................................................8

8.0 Environmental Management ......................................................................................................9

9.0 Communication ........................................................................................................................10

10.0 Construction Methodology .......................................................................................................10

10.1 Top-Down Construction ..................................................................................................10

10.2 Jump-Lift .........................................................................................................................13

11.0 Collaboration.............................................................................................................................14

12.0 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................14

13.0 References .................................................................................................................................15

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 1.0 Introduction

The Shard is currently the seventh tallest skyscraper in Europe standing tall at 306 meters, based on
standard height measurements, the measurement not including antenna masts (Wikipedia, 2021). The
Shard was built in the London Bridge Quarter, an old section of the city, as well as a major transportation
hub. The proposed building and its architecture made a great deal of sense from an engineering point of
view. The construction of the Shard consists of hybrid concrete cores, composite floors, and steel
structural members. Construction started in March 2009 and formally inaugurated in July 2012.
Developed by Sellar Property Group as a 95-storey skyscraper, and designed by the Italian architect,
Renzo Piano. It was designed to be a vertical city the first of a new generation of mixed-use tower
(Offices, Restaurants, Hotel and Residential) that build on a constrained development space, without
disrupting a major transport hub below (The Vision, 2021).

Initially, the project budget was a £350 million, but in October 2008 budget quickly increased to £435
million when the project’s scale approved (Therichest, 2021). The management of the project had
significant effort to the project ran extremely smoothly. In the end, the Shard project was completed on
time in July 2012 over 38 months, with the budget of £435.

“I am immensely proud that throughout the challenges, we remained true to the original vision of
creating a vertical city, with multiple and different occupiers. Today the Shard is a living, dynamic
building, full of energy, and a beacon for modern London.” (Irvine Sellar, the-shard, 2021).

2.0 Stakeholders

The Shard project key stakeholders are as bellow:

Developer: Sellar Property Group
Architect: Renzo Piano
Associate architect: Adamson Associates
Project Management: Turner & Townsend
Structural Engineering Consultant: WSP Group
M&E Engineering Consultant – Arup
Cost Consultant: Davis Langdon & Everest

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 Construction Engineering Consultant: Robert Bird Group
Contractor: Mace
Piling Contractor: Stent Foundations
Concrete Contractor: Byrne Bros
Cladding Contractor: Scheldebouw
Steelwork Contractor: Severfield Reeve Structures

3.0 Obstructions

The Shard development site were heavily constrained by existing infrastructures which has had a deep
effect on the form of the basement construction. The site is located next to London Bridge Station, where
around 75 million people were passing over a year (Fig. 1). Also surrounding the site are constructed
the 19th century. All of these assets were sensitive to act that occurred during project construction. The
Shard team managed all these site constraints in an impressive way.

Fig. 1. Development land

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 4.0 Construction History
1999: Irvine Sellar decided to develop Southwark Tower, which was a 1970s style office building. The
local bodies were opposition the development idea. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott ordered an
inquiry in to the Sellar’s development plan (The Vision, 2021).

2000: Sellar meets Italian architect Renzo Piano in Berlin and ask him to create a vertical city on the
Southwark Tower site – a place where community would work, visit, live and enjoy themselves (The
Vision, 2021).

2003: The Deputy Prime Minister announced that the design of The Shard had been approved (The
Vision, 2021).

2007: The developer bought the place from PwC and preparations started for demolition of Southwark
Tower (The Vision, 2021).

2008: After the financial depression in the European market, Qatari investors entered project in to
provide funds, and Southwark Tower demolition work started in April (The Vision, 2021).

2009: Demolition of Southwark Tower’s work completed, and construction started in March (The
Vision, 2021).

2010: The concrete core was raised continuously by approximately three meters a day. It had become
UK’s tallest building in November, replacing One Canada Square in Canary Wharf (The Vision, 2021).

2012: The Shard was its full height on March 30. The Shard is inaugurated with a ceremony in July with
attendance the Prime Minister of Qatar, and Prince Andrew, Duke of York (The Vision, 2021).

5.0 Project Management

Turner & Townsend started The Shard when project was just on a paper with the Directive model of
PMO. This injected a great deal of professionalism into the project, and it guaranteed a high level of
consistency of practice across the project. They worked closely with the developer to achieve a project’s
commercial and quality criteria. Turner & Townsend was the central coordinating team. Also, PMO had
managed skillfully all internal and external stakeholders, and installed over 900 monitoring points
around the project’s third-party property and a dashboard to keep external stakeholders informed. Turner
& Townsend expertly responded several challenges, offered innovative solutions, and managed over
700 legal obligations on behalf of developer (Turnerandtownsend, 2021).

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 With Turner & Townsend’s pioneering programme and project management role, they have achieved a
series of an innovative first for the UK and World construction sector.

- Top-down construction strategy provided an opportunity to continue simultaneously construction

work for both substructure and superstructure construction.

- Jump-lifting of the core -a self-climbing elevator system provided an alternative to external lifts.

- London’s largest continuous concrete pouring over 36 hours in very restraint area.

- The UK’s tallest crane operation at 255 meter high, sometimes operated under high-speed wind.

6.0 Project Management Programmes

The project construction firms Mace Group, WSP and ARUP decided to use advanced GEOBIM
software solution of the building information management (BIM) software for planning, designing and
construction of the project. With the BIM software program, the project productivity jumps up to higher
level, with help of 3D topographical surveys, 3D surrounding environment scanning by Total Station,
GPS, Laser scanning technologies and real-time 4D modelling to monitor how all elements of the project
are coherently each other. Using the BIM software, the Mace was able to assess and manage construction
and logistic issues more efficiently (Fig. 2). The GEOBIM solution slightly improved construction
coordination and productivity (Gwprime.geospatialworld, 2021).

Fig. 2. Common GEOBIM solution structure.

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 Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an expansive knowledge domain within the Architecture,
Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) industries

BIM implementations and discussions continue to increase in intensity as more organizations and
national bodies recognize its value-adding potential. This is evidenced by the accelerating emergence
of guidelines and major reports dedicated to exploring and defining the requirements and deliverables
of BIM (Fig. 3) (Succar, B. 2009).

Fig. 3. Some common connotations of multiple BIM terms.

The project stakeholders have been using BIM software for several years expertly on construction
industry. BIM software helped project team to evaluate and manage construction and logistic issues
smoothly. Also, BIM visual scheduling and planning slightly increased the quality of the team
communication and collaboration among all stakeholders.

Also, the project visual planning was able to review which were fixed planning process before they
become costly changes during construction. For example, the tower crane installation has been scheduled
too late into the project. Team early discovered this coordination gap; it may delay the project.

The structural engineering consultant used Bentley’s structural software to optimize structural design of
the Shard. WSP had a great chance to create over thousand different structural models to evaluate right
structural model of the building. This enables to save time and construction cost and reduced structural
risks.

7.0 Quality and Risk Management

Quality was the significant goal throughout all phase of the project. Reaching a high-quality level was
essential to achieve team’s mission and vision. The Shard’s teamwork was greatly managed. The Shard

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 risk management plan was based on the grounds of ensuring quality of work, ensuring quality of
materials, and recognizing the quality of the project.

The Shard was a complicated challenges that involved a lot of external stakeholders and confined
development space. The Shard location adjacent to one of the London’s busiest transport interchanges,
where daily around 300 thousand people were passing through London Bridge Station. A project this
scale was quote critical for safety and quality standards.

Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) experts, with their vast knowledge of HSE prevention during
construction, from both an insurance perspective and from the HSE’s perspective, worked within the
project and 3rd party properties around the Shard. This involved regular inspections to ensure the HSE
risk was maintained to a low level throughout the fit out and up to completion and installation of the
project.

Also, health and safety were played key impact in the success of the project delivering on-time. Project
management enforced good quality management by implementing the following with dynamic strategy
to ensure project success.

• Regular safety audits and inspections

• Continuous safety improvements,
• Safety forums and trainings
• Specific high-rise induction programmes
• Incentive schemes were applied

8.0 Environmental Management

Environmental impact assessment and control were very important during both the demolition and
construction stages. Also, the local government bodies were following strictly the environmental
regulations.
The Temple company were provided the environmental management solutions over five years period.
Strictly construction site was monitoring 24/7 during construction period. This included the scope and
extend of monitoring and protection via ETAP (Environmental Trigger Action Plan). Temple provided
noise management and monitoring, and data for vibration and air quality. Also, provided real-time data
and data transparency to stakeholder group. There were no major disruptions was for the 3rd party
operations around the project (Templegroup, 2021).

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 9.0 Communication
The Shard project communication management was one of the most important aspects to complete it on
successful way from project planning to closeup period. Strong team communication was builds good
working relations, shared new ideas, best practices shared openly and the benefited to the project
stakeholders. Also, strong team communication skills helped team members learn how to manage
conflict in a positive way.

According to PMI’s authors conducted anonymous survey with a large of international professional
project managers in June 2007, to determine which project performance factors are related to project
failures. Based on the survey outcomes shows that, 43% of project managers answered that project
Communication factors were a key role of project failure, while 42% replayed that project Process
factors were key roles and only 32% project managers responded that stakeholders were a key factor in
the failure (Pmi, 2021).

10.0 Construction Methodology

The building contractor Mace received the contract letter of intent award for the construction of The
Shard with a budget of £350 million, but project budget quickly increased to £435 million when the scale
of project was approved in October 2008 (Therichest, 2021).

The construction of The Shard was almost aborted because of the economic turmoil in the European
market. But a consortium of Qatari investors saved project and paid over £150 million to acquire an 80%
stake for the project, and after that the site works started (Therichest, 2021).

The Shard construction period was the tight timescale only 38 months, and project must open before the
London 2012 Summer Olympic game started. This meant the project management was forced to rethink
the basic principles of project management and use innovative techniques. This included the first ever
use of top-down construction for a core, the UK’s ever largest continuous concrete pour, the UK’s first
use of jump-lift construction, the first inclined hoist in the World. To make the delivery truly innovative,
the goal was to maximize prefabrication and offsite assembly due to the fact of the congested
development space, limited timeframe and one of London’s busiest transport hubs (Building, 2021).

10.1 Top-Down Construction

WSP’s team carefully reviewed a drawing of the original Southwark Towers, which was not
well scanned of a photocopy of a hand-drawn original in 1970s. This drawing enables the
team to work out the position of the Shard new piles. The risk was there was no guarantee of
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 the drawing scale accuracy, and the Shard piles had to be sensitively placed. But WPS’s team
was ready to redesign the foundation for any changes during new piles construction (Building,
2021).

“Believe it or not, the positions were all spot on. We have a very constrained site. We had to
be quite careful about how to demolish the existing building, excavate down and control any
movement. At the same time, whatever we did had to be the fastest way of constructing the
building” says Kamran Moazami, director of WSP.

One of the challenges is that top-down construction had been planned from the start. This
method only enabled the building’s substructure and superstructure to get under control
simultaneously, thereby saving three months off the construction programme (Ingenia, 2021).

The three-level basement floor was built top-down construction method. Top-down
construction sequence meant casting the ground floor slab first and continuing the excavation
ground below while work on the superstructure above can grow (Building, 2021).

The sequence of top-down construction was as follows:

- Bearing piles were bored from ground level and steel plunge columns installed.
Extremely tight tolerances were required on the plunge columns to ensure that the section
stayed within the finished core walls.

- The ground slab was cast on a slip membrane so that blinding concrete did not adhere to
the underside.

- Excavation of two floors of basement then took place beneath the ground floor slab.

- The slipform was set up level basement #2 on the plunge columns.

- At the same time, the slab for level basement #2 was cast.

- Excavation continued beneath basement #2 to formation level.

- The slipform was not allowed to climb above level 21 while the core was supported on
plunge columns only.

- Excavation was completed to underside of raft level.

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 - The raft slab was placed in a single 5500 cubic meter concrete pour taking 700 truckloads
over 36 hours. Up to this stage, all loads were carried by secant walls and the piles
containing plunge columns.

- Subsequently, the other piles and bearing pressures under the raft slab, were also
mobilized.

- The core walls in the basement floor were completed using by self-compacting concrete
pumped from the base of the shutters. This rendered the plunge columns redundant, but
that were left in place.

The carefully designed, planned and sequenced construction of the sub-structure and the core
ensured that the building structure was stable and safe at every stage of the construction. The
top-down construction methodology led to a three-month programmme saving.

Over a thirty-six-hour period approximately 5,500 cubic meter of raft foundation concrete
poured in innovative way. Concrete contractor Byrne Bros, had to look very careful at the
concrete mix design, and he revealed that replacement of 75% of the cement with ground
granulated blast, which helps limit the amount of fresh concrete heat generation. These
replacements help to reduce the building’s total embodied energy and carbon footprint. The
concrete was poured in layers 750 mm deep, this helped limit heat generation and next layers
poured early. A computer program was created to monitor concrete temperature changes, and
thermocouples were fixed to the reinforced concrete bars to measure heat movement.
According to heat reading the concrete mix design can be change at the batching plant if
needed (Building, 2021).

During the concrete purring, concrete mixers were arriving on site at two-minute intervals.
Used three concrete pumps were with a total up to 150 cubic meter concrete pumping capacity
an hour. This were coming from four different batching plants. This was distributed the risks.
If one of the batching plants goes down only lose 25% of the capacity. That is why three
batching plants used instead of two. This way Byrne Bros had reduced concrete pouring time
and risks and pouring quality sharply increased. It was UK’s ever largest concrete pouring
activity. (Building, 2021).

The whole concrete pouring operation was scheduled for a weekend when the London’s traffic
was quieter and there was less concrete demand from other sites in the city (Building, 2021).

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 Throughout the basement floors excavation activity created more than 65,000 cubic meter
excavated soil, trucks were leaving the sites every 180 seconds. Contractor Mace was gained
a lot of experience on lorry movements (Building, 2021). “We worked out primary and
secondary routes for the trucks and planned it all in consultation with Southwark council and
all the major stakeholders.” says Tim Goldby, director of Mace.

10.2 Jump Lift

The UK’s first jump lift designed by Kone for the Shard project. Jump lift system improved
construction efficiency and speed. As well as it also greatly improving on-site logistics, safety
and it can operate in all weather conditions. Currently five permanent Kone jump lift are
working at the Shard. Also, Kone Jump lift is protected by over 100 granted patents or patent
applications globally (Fig. 4) (Kone-major-projects, 2021).

How works jump lift: When construction has reached between the fifth and tenth floors, the
mobile machine room is installed, and the jump lift can start to use for few floors. As the new
floors added, Kone jump lift follows, with each jump it being served new floors (Kone-major-
projects, 2021).

Fig. 4. Overview of The Shard Jump-lift

“One of the biggest logistical challenges during any construction project is getting building
workers, materials, and goods to the right place at the right time – with maximum safety and
efficiency. The Shard faced these typical challenges and more. The size and design of the
building, combined with a small footprint in an already congested area of central London,
equaled a challenging construction schedule from the very beginning. This is where KONE
truly delivered with its innovative KONE JumpLift solution, maximizing efficiency,
productivity, and safety on site.“ (Michael Williams, Managing Director of KONE Great
Britain).
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 11.0 Collaboration
The project’s peak over 1,500 cross-discipline people were worked, ranging from engineers to
technicians, plumbers to operators, drivers to security staff. The legendary collaboration was a challenge
in itself. Team members were listening to each other’s concerns to find solutions to problems in a timely
manner. The big project were easy to get loss in project disciplines, but The Sard’s team find a solution
and moved on instead of having an argument.

The Shard's collaborative team added a new perspectives on for the UK's construction industry, with
together people of different backgrounds, different knowledge, different ideas, experiences, and skills.

12.0 Conclusion
The Shard is a construction masterpiece in London. To make a project on such a tight place a tight
timeframe, with well-planned process and innovative architectural and structural engineering of the
Shard was fitted by the innovation brought to the construction methodology. Project management
allowed to save four months from the programme along with mitigating potential delay risks with the
new excavation methodology. The success of the Shard in terms of the high level of innovation.

The Shard’s innovative construction methodology archived to reduce cost, increased the construction
programme and slightly reduced project risks. The “jump-start” methodology for the Shard won the
Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) London awards 2010 “Building award”.

The Shard was delivered on time with the 38 months construction timeline. Also, 125% over its planned
budget. The Shard’s innovative methodology enable to use for many new construction projects.

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 13.0 References
The-shard, (2021). The Vision. Available at: https://www.the-shard.com/about/ (Accessed: 03
November 2021).

The-shard, (2021). A Vertical City. Available at: https://www.the-shard.com/shard/a-vertical-city/

(Accessed: 03 November 2021).

Wsp, (2021). The Shard, London. Available at: https://www.wsp.com/en-SA/projects/the-shard

(Accessed: 03 November 2021).

Building, (2021). The Shard: Foot of the mountain. Available at:

https://www.building.co.uk/focus/the-shard-foot-of-the-mountain/3162661.article (Accessed: 04
November 2021).

Engineering-timelines, (2021). The Shard. Available at: http://www.engineering-

timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=1447 (Accessed: 04 November 2021).

Wikipedia, (2021). List of tallest buildings in Europe. Available at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Europe#Tallest_buildings (Accessed: 05
November 2021).

Therichest, (2021). The Shard, London: Cost of Europe’s Tallest Building. Available at:
https://www.therichest.com/technology/shard-london-bridge/ (Accessed: 05 November 2021).

Ingenia, (2021). Building the Shard. Available at: https://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/issue-

52/building-the-shard (Accessed: 05 November 2021).

Pmi, (2021). Seven causes of project failure. Available at: https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/seven-

causes-project-failure-initiate-recovery-7195 (Accessed: 06 November 2021).

Turnerandtownsend, (2021). London Bridge Quarter - The Shard. Available at:

https://www.turnerandtownsend.com/en/projects/london-bridge-quarter-the-shard/ (Accessed: 06
November 2021).

Gwprime.geospatialworld, (2021). London’s Iconic Shard Tower Built Using GEOBIM Solutions.
Available at: https://www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net/case-study/londons-iconic-shard-tower-built-
using-geobim-solutions/ (Accessed: 07 November 2021).

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 Templegroup, (2021). The Shard. Available at: https://www.templegroup.co.uk/market_study/the-
shard/ (Accessed: 07 November 2021).

Kone-major-projects, (2021). Kone JumpLift. Available at: https://www.kone-major-

projects.com/high-rise-solutions/jumplift.aspx (Accessed: 08 November 2021).

Newcivilengineer, (2021). ICE London Awards 2010: Winners. Available at:

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/ice-london-awards-2010-winners-01-04-2010/ (Accessed: 08
November 2021).

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