Live from the BBC...

The iconic face of BBC radio is visible again after a two-year absence. The freshly cleaned Portland stone of Broadcasting House is blindingly white in the summer sun now the scaffolding has come down. The only clue that this project is far from complete is the crowd of construction workers relaxing on the steps of All Souls Church in Portland Place.

The refurbishment of the 1930s Broadcasting House forms part of the BBC’s £400m grand vision for what it calls its “West One” site. Broadcasting House is the home of live radio; now the corporation wants to create what will probably be the world’s largest news studio by moving its television news operation there from White City. The move is a bold one, especially as most other media organisations have given up on central London and decamped to cheaper areas where they can build high-tech facilities from scratch.

“Public consumption of news has really changed – there’s this concept now that people expect to watch events as they unfold,” says Keith Beal, the BBC’s project director. “It’s very important that news is located in central London as so much of it originates here. It’s also very important people get the same story whether it’s on the television, radio, the internet or a mobile phone.”

The decision to move news to West One presented a number of challenges. These include creating a 21st-century news factory from a grade II*-listed building next to a grade I-listed church on a cramped, inner London site. And Bovis Lend Lease, the contractor for the job, had to achieve this without interrupting any live radio broadcasts from other parts of the site. “One of my greatest worries is keeping everything on air and the phantom driller at bay,” says Beal.

Throughout this project the key word has been “resilience”. The whole facility is designed around the principle that nothing should affect a live broadcast. The site has two independent power feeds plus its own back-up generator. Studios have top-notch sound and vibration proofing. Even so, demolishing buildings next to studios without creating excessive noise or vibration was never going to be easy. Bovis also had to be careful not to accidentally slice through live feeds to the outside world. “We have been broadcast-critical while we have been carrying out demolition and rebuilding works,” says Mike Handley, Bovis Lend Lease’s project director.

The only way to upgrade the site and keep broadcasts on air was to tackle it in phases. The first phase includes the refurbishment of the 1930s Broadcasting House (phase 1a), which is virtually complete, and the demolition of the stand-alone Egton wing to the east of Broadcasting House. A replacement building that forms the eastern wing of the new development is under construction (phase 1b), as is a huge basement linking the two buildings. Meanwhile, broadcasting continues from the 1960s Broadcasting House extension to the rear. The first phase is set for completion in September. Once it is finished, staff will move from the extension back into old Broadcasting House.

The second phase consists of the demolition of the 1960s extension and its replacement with a building that will link Broadcasting House and the east wing (See “Auntie’s new look". This will eventually house radio and TV studios, including the huge 24-hour newsroom.

Purpose-built for the BBC, Broadcasting House was designed to protect studios from the noise of the outside world – and this helps to protect against 21st-century threats too. “You ensure the most sensitive areas are in a resilient zone in the centre so you have better protection,” explains Beal. “It was designed that way in the 1930s and the requirements are the same today.” The building has a solid masonry core containing radio studios and an outer steel frame housing offices and post-production areas.

The whole building has been upgraded to incorporate more resilient studios, modern services and broadcasting technology. More internal space has been created by replacing a huge mansard roof spanning from the 5th to 10th floor with a vertical curtain wall. Additional studios have been inserted in the masonry core, and open-plan offices replace cellular ones on the building perimeter. All the live feeds to the outside world pass through the building’s basement and had to be protected during the refurbishment.

An early part of the job was demolition works. This included knocking down the Egton wing, the old Broadcasting House mansard roof and a cross wall within its masonry core. Demolition contractor Cantillon had to convince the BBC it was up to carrying out the works without affecting broadcasts. “It was a very complicated job,” says Jim O’Sullivan, Cantillon’s project director. “We had to do a presentation to the head of radio showing the levels of noise and vibration, the tools and methods we were going to use.” These techniques included an acoustic quilt attached to scaffolding to cut sound transmission.

As well as keeping the noise down, Cantillon had to keep the rain out when it demolished the mansard roof. “Taking 60% of the roof off and weather-protecting a theatre below and the basement was very difficult,” says O’Sullivan. “We created a double layer of protection. We used the third floor to catch the water by perforating it and putting drainage underneath, and tanked the second floor in case any water got through.” Once the temporary waterproofing was in place, the roof could be dismantled section by section. Cantillon also demolished a cross wall within the E

E masonry core and putting in new floor slabs to create a larger, more flexible space. The original Portland stone facade has been restored. New services had to be carefully shoehorned into the building and the original oak-panelled rooms in the distinctive bullnose-shaped “prow” of the building have been restored.

The reception area had to retain its open character yet meet the security needs of a modern broadcaster based in central London, so blast-resistant glass screens have been specified to act as a barrier between reception and the rest of Broadcasting House. English Heritage wanted the screens to be frameless to minimise their visual impact – a tall order given that blast-resistant glass is usually supported around its entire perimeter. The fixings were specially developed to hold the glass in place with just the right amount of pressure.

One of the most crucial parts of the job was creating a three-storey-deep basement extending beyond the new east wing up to the wall of old Broadcasting House. This contains all the plant for West One. “This place can run on its own without any external supply – there’s enough down there to run a small town,” says Handley. “Cardiff, more like,” chips in Beal.

The basement works had the potential to disrupt the Tube network as well as BBC broadcasts. Excavation stopped just 3 m short of the Victoria Line tunnel. “London Underground was here most days doing real-time monitoring in the tunnel, in Egton and in old Broadcasting House,” says Mark Ainsworth, Bovis Lend Lease’s project manager at West One. The basement is deeper than the foundations of old Broadcasting House so sheet piles were used to support them. These were driven in hydraulically to minimise vibration – those crucial live feeds were just the other side of the wall.

The new east wing sits on massive springs to dampen out vibration caused by the Tube. These are inserted at first-floor level and allow the building to move up and down by 20 mm. As a result, the east wing studios will not need the same level of isolation as the studios in old Broadcasting House. But there was still the danger that vibration could be transmitted from the basement up into the building through the lift shaft. The solution was to suspend the concrete shaft from first floor level down three storeys into the basement. “We built it off a bed of sand in the basement then washed the sand away when it was finished,” says Ainsworth. When the shell and core of the east wing is completed in September, work on the building will not restart until phase two is under way, so it and the new extension can be fitted out at the same time.

“We feel pretty relieved that all the risky parts of the project are now under our belt,” says Beal. The job is only 40% complete in terms of programme and value, however, and has fallen 11 months behind schedule. The delay has been attributed to several factors, including: the brief being changed; Easton Masonry, the contractor installing the Portland stone facade on the east wing, going bust; and an extra £20m being spent refurbishing another building on the site.

The final part of the first phase is “integrated systems testing”. “This is to prove everything works over the two buildings,” says Beal. “It’s a series of tests that looks at all sorts of scenarios to demonstrate there is no single point of failure under any condition. Once the BBC is happy with this we can begin the process of migration into old Broadcasting House.” As staff move out of the 1960s extension, Bovis will start work on the second phase and incorporate lessons learned on the first phase to make up for lost time. Finally, in 2009, the BBC will be ready for 50 years of uninterrupted broadcasting.

Project team

client BBC developer Land Securities
architect MacCormac Jamieson Prichard structural and facade engineer Whitbybird services engineer Faber Maunsell acoustic engineer Bickerdike Allen Partners contractor Bovis Lend Lease demolition contractor Cantillon concrete frame Byrne Bros
steel frame William Hare stone restoration PAYE Stonework & Restoration mechanical services Axima Building Services
electrical services T Clarke curtain wall Mero (UK) studios FB Elmer 
acoustic springs GERB Fassadenbau