Utilities & Nuclear

River Pipework Replacement, Baynards House

Baynards House sits on the north bank at Blackfriars, and the tunnel it needed replacing was carrying cooling water beneath the Thames itself. There was no dry, solid ground to build from, no vehicle access, and no margin for error working around live river infrastructure. BAM Nuttall brought TAG in to build the new chamber that would make the tunnel watertight for years to come.

The job meant working down through the riverbed inside not one but two cofferdams, a main enclosure and a secondary one nested inside it, holding back the Thames while the concrete work went in. TAG constructed a new watertight reinforced concrete chamber around the existing cooling-pipe tunnel, formed a sheet pile capping beam, cast a precast flood protection cover slab, and built a new inlet bellmouth surround.

None of it could be reached the easy way. Every shift got to the workface by barge and by man-rider, and every pour, every fix, every lift happened inside the confines of the cofferdam with the tide working against the programme rather than for it.

The result was a sealed, flood-protected chamber protecting critical cooling infrastructure beneath one of London's busiest stretches of river, delivered on marine plant with the precision that working inside a live cofferdam demands.

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