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Safety Circle steps used in this project

As part of the renovation of the BBC Television Centre in White City (London), Eurosafe have installed various types of fall protection equipment to ensure there is a safe method to complete maintenance on the building.

The building

The BBC Television Centre in White City, London was originally designed by Graham Dawbarn CBE and built in the 60's. This was the first purpose-built television centre. The centre has eight studios and includes filming of Fawlty Towers, Blue Peter, Absolutely Fabulous and many more. After the sale of the Television Centre in 2012, The BBC returned to the Television Centre in 2017 after renovation works were completed. The redevelopment of this building was created for mixed-use. This includes office and studio space for the BBC but also a gym, hotel, apartments, gardens and restaurants.

The requirement

The main requirement for this project was to ensure that all roof areas, and some sections of the façade, had a safe method of access. This was required to ensure that any maintenance activities and work required to the roof could be completed safely. The façade had limited access for activities such as window cleaning, so the solution had to ensure that it included access to all areas. On several areas of the roof, there were some older systems already in place and in many areas, there was nothing installed which created many fall hazards.

As workers will be accessing the roof and facade for general inspection and maintenance purposes, the Work at Height Regulations 2005 (WAHR) states that competent and trained workers must use suitable fall protection equipment.

The solutions

Eurosafe provided a full access strategy for all the roof areas including the installation of Latchways ManSafe® horizontal cable systems which were traditionally fixed to a concrete deck roof via galvanized mild steel support posts.

The existing systems, which consisted of freestanding and fixed guardrails, were upgraded and extended to suit today’s requirements and safety standards. A new fixed access ladder, including a vertical fall arrest system, was installed to provide safe access up to the studio roof. Davit sockets were also installed to provide abseil access to certain areas of the façade that cannot be reached by any other means.