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09 April 2003
Glazing Team Involved in Major Refurbishment Project at the Natural History Museum's Palaeontology Building |
Glazing specialists from Norman & Underwood in Leicester are employed on a major contract to upgrade the Natural History Museum’s Palaeontology Building.
The work involves replacing 920 square metres of glazed tiles on the façade of the 1970’s building, which is home to more than nine million fossils.
The Palaeontology Building provides working space for 46 permanent researchers, conservators, curators, students and short-term researchers as well as 1,000 visitors a year from international institutions
To ensure disruption to their activities is kept to a minimum, a detailed floor-to-floor schedule of work has been agreed, with each part of the refurbishment contract undertaken in stages.
The Norman & Underwood team is replacing 500 existing panels with non-vision aesthetic toughened glass spandrel panels with integral insulated backing. These panels externally obscure the building’s concrete floor slabs at each floor level.
Chris Doran, contract supervisor in the company’s Glazing Systems Division added: “The contract requires new exterior glazing to all five floors to replace the existing glazed tiles which have faded. The work will take around five to six months to complete.”
The contract is just one part of the £7.5 million upgrade, funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Natural History Museum and led by the Museum’s Estates Department under the guidance of English Heritage.
Undertaken over two years, the project comprises improvements to fire safety and lighting, the removal of asbestos, new cabling to cater for modern IT requirements as well as general office and laboratory refurbishment.
When completed the improved building will provide enhanced protection of some of the museum’s most sensitive collections, which include Ice Age mammals, plants collected by Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, insects preserved in amber and archaeopteryx, a fossil of the world’s oldest bird.
The Palaeontology Building is currently covered by a protective hoarding, but visitors to the museum are able to see some of the work in progress through a series of view-points.
Mr Doran added: “It is good to be involved in the upgrade of a museum building which houses such important collections and attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world.”
“This contract is one of several we have secured recently in Central London, with our division also undertaking glazing work on projects in Soho Square, Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue.”
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