The site: the global headquarters of a major investment bank. This landmark tower is 156m tall, with 32 storeys and almost 1.7 million sq. ft. of floor space.
Canary Wharf
How our internal drainage experts solved an ongoing issue that was seriously disrupting the headquarters of a FTSE 100 financial services firm.
The problem: repeated internal blockages across multiple floors and stacks, leading to system shutdowns, flooding and 4+ call-outs every week.
Detailed investigation and phased solutions
The Metro Solution
Investigation
Our surveying team created a detailed internal schematic, enhancing existing plans
We heat-mapped incidents in real time as they occurred to identify problem areas
We laboratory tested water samples from across the building to diagnose the issues on a chemical level
We interviewed surveyors to understand the building’s design capabilities
Piloting
Our initial findings suggested three key issues:
- The system was designed for 60% of the current capacity
- Overcapacity was compounded by hard water scale issues
- There were several crowded floors that accounted for a disproportionate share of call-outs
We therefore pilot-tested small dosing units on each floor, free of charge to the client
Implementation
Our dosing unit trial was launched for a three month period
Our engineers gathered data throughout this period to monitor our approach
At the same time, we initiated a rigorous clean of the internal infrastructure, using state-of-the-art mechanical coring equipment
The final phase was to bring the building onto a biannual planned maintenance program
Dramatic reductions in reactive costs
3 month reduction in call-outs on 3 problematic floors
12 month reduction in reactive spend across the whole site
Source: internal company data; reactive costs based on historic average reactive charge value of £933 per job
The initial pilot trial, which took place on 3 highly-problematic floors, showed a 74% reduction in reactive issues, with only 5 call-outs in the 3 months following the dosing implementation, versus 19 in the previous quarter.
In the 12 months following our implementation, we saw a building-wide reduction in reactive spend of nearly 70%, which we estimate represents an annual saving of in excess of £60,000
We have since continued to implement our robust PPM regime, carrying out extensive internal cleaning using Picote’s MaxiMiller coring equipment, and reactive callouts remain at consistently lower levels