Building the Future

'In the heart of historic London,

a brand-new type of building is taking shape.

A unique set of challenges has given rise to a world-first:

a prefabricated skyscraper.

Assembled by a tiny crew,

in an impossibly small space.

On a super-fast schedule,

where every hour is accounted for, months into the future.

Nothing like this has ever been attempted.

But if they can pull it off,

it could change the way we build forever.

This is the inside story of the world's most cutting-edge

and ambitious construction project.

It is the Leadenhall Building

and it is a Super Skyscraper.'

Super Skyscrapers was made possible in part

'London has been building high rises for almost a thousand years.

It began in 1066, with the Tower of London,

built to intimidate the locals.

It rose 90 feet and became Britain's first St Paul's, at least the fourth cathedral to stand on this site

reached 365 feet, more than three centuries ago.'

The city has always understood high rise

and always understood that high-rise was the way

of showing your strength and your success

by marking your skyline.

'After the air raids of the Second World War,

and terrorist attacks in the 1980s and '90s,

which caused more than a billion dollars worth of damage...

..as well as through successive financial booms

which each produced their own monuments...

..London has seen a constant cycle of construction,

demolition, and reconstruction.'

The greatest constant in London's history

has been change.

As Chief Planner for the City of London,

I'm responsible for 4,000 years of history.

This is the point where people have been

trading for 2,000 years.

I expect it to be the point

where they will be trading for another 2,000.

'Now, a new kind of skyscraper is rising.

The Leadenhall Building.

Its distinctive triangular shape

has already earned it a nickname: The Cheesegrater.

The people behind it believe it will change

the way we build.

It's 2am on a Friday morning in May 2012.

While the city sleeps,

two gigantic trucks make their way

through the streets of London.

They're carrying pieces of steel, 90 feet long,

and weighing more than 40 tons each.

They travel by night,

otherwise they'd bring daytime traffic to a standstill.

When in position,

these supersized pieces of steel will become part of a unique structure:

London's newes

Leadenhall Building.

736 feet tall.

52 storeys.

It will wrap a 20,000-ton steel frame

in 75,000 square feet of glass.

The Leadenhall Building won't break any height records,

but what makes it unique is the revolutionary way

it's being built.

Prefabricated off-site

and assembled in the tightest of spaces.

of building big.

The construction site is right in the heart

of cramped historic London,

and that's what gives the builders their greatest challenge.

The area they have to work in is tiny.

Just ten feet wider than the building's footprint.

If these columns don't go up tonight,

there's nowhere to store them.

What this means is that the Leadenhall Building can't be built like other skyscrapers.

In the last 30 years, most tall buildings

have been constructed using a concrete core.

It's a design that produces But it also demands a serious amount of space.

That space to mix on site...

..or accommodate a fleet of concrete trucks.

And space for a massive workforce.

Since, at Leadenhall, none of that is possible,

the building's designers hit upon

two groundbreaking ideas.

The first requires getting rid of the concrete,

and replacing it with steel.

The only concrete you'll find in the Leadenhall Building

is in the floors.

Instead of having a massive central core,

they planned a steel exo-skeleton,

that would sit outside the building.

The second space-saving idea

is that all the work on this steel frame

will be done, not in London, but 200 miles away,

in the north of England.

Here,

are folded and pressed

to withstand enormous stress.

Next, the steelwork is passed on to another factory,

where it's sand-blasted, primed and fireproofed.

Then, it's stockpiled until the exact moment

it is required onsite.

When all that's left to do is

It's not construction,

it's "some assembly required" on a monumental scale.

The engineers are so confident in their new way of building

that they've agreed to what seems like an impossible deadline.

Work started in October 2011.

And they committed to getting it up and running -

"power on" - before the end of 2013.

Just 26 months.

In skyscraper terms that's a sprint.

But...one tiny delay

and the whole production line is thrown out of sync.

In the long term, delays have massive financial implications.

The Leadenhall Building's first paying tenants

already have a moving in date.

The project is a joint venture

between two of the world's biggest investment companies.

They intend to lease out floor space,

and want the building open,

making money as soon as possible.

For every day lost someone will have to pay damages.

But right now, there are more immediate problems.

The column is meant to be going up five storeys.

But without explanation

the crane's emergency brake has kicked in.

Until the column is in position,

nothing else can happen on-site.

The crane is brand-new and its on-board computer

thinks the column is over its safe working limit.

(Bleeping)

And that's not something that Paul or his crew can solve.

Paul's got no choice but to call the manufacturers for assistance.

And they're 800 miles away... in Italy.

It's now 7am and the day shift workers

are starting to arrive on-site.

After a reset of the computer,

they can take another shot at getting the columns in place.

Finally, they have success -

but it comes almost eight hours late.

It's a delay they can't afford.

With workers ready and waiting to flo

and glaze the structure,

the domino effects can be far-reaching and costly.

If they miss deadlines,

the penalties will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars a week.

And there's only 11,000 more pieces to go.

By September, the structure is approaching the halfway mark.

Today they are starting to add flooring

to the 19th level of the building's 52 storeys.

On a different build, you'd expect to see hundreds of workers

pouring and smoothing concrete floors,

with convoys of concrete trucks coming and going.

But not at Leadenhall.

Like almost everything else on this project,

the floors are made off-site

and delivered ready to be dropped into place.

This 150-million-dollar-plant

was developed especially for the Leadenhall project.

It may be the closest that pouring concrete ever gets to being cool.'

Basically, it's the future of the construction industry.

Off-site manufacturing is the one thing where we can make that massive change.

They know their floor is already made.

We've manufactured it, it's to the correct quality

and they know it will come and arrive on time

and allow them to install it in their slot on-site.

'The system only works with total precision -

the right mix, into the right mold,

with gaps for all the utilities that will come later.

Because things will happen fast when it gets to the site.

Crane driver Christian Holliday and just six workers

can complete an area nearly the size of four tennis courts

in a single day.

Pouring concrete on-site would take three times as long and twice the manpower.

By 10am, Christian has laid 18 30-foot-square floor slabs

weighing two and a half tons each.

To stay

he must lay a further 34 by the end of his shift.

That's one every ten minutes.

Overseeing the work is 28-year-old Project Engineer,

Karl Wilkinson.

It's his responsibility to ensure work doesn't fall behind schedule.'

We have no logistical space here.

So we have to work on a just-in-time delivery basis.

Just in time means... nearly too late.

'It would be impossibl

to coordinate the delivery

and installation of hundreds of thousands of components

using conventional 2D plans.

So, instead,

they've created a 3D model of the entire structure,

accurate down to the last bolt.'

We've spent a lot

in the 3D environment

making sure that when things come to site

we've got that surety that it all fits together

and that it all works.

And make the actual process on-site as efficient as possible.

We refer to it as digital engineering.

Digital engineering for me really is the future for construction.

'Every delivery, every crane lift,

every beam, bolt

and cable fix

has already been given a time slot.

They've run the complete simulation

and "built" the Leadenhall Building,

in a virtual world 37 times.

But they only get one chance to build it for real.'

It's fun

works that are planned,

that plan is followed.

If I'd have come in and these beams weren't here,

or the bolts were missing at one end and it was on temporary pins,

I'd have been going back and having to cancel deliveries

that are already parked outside.

And then having to reschedule the works and you lose a day.

This steel work was all erected last night.

The concrete planks are here now, so...

within a 24-hour shift,

we'll have erected two storeys of steelwork

and we'll have a full floor plate complete.

So we have to make sure

the planning is absolutely perfect.

So that as one trade is finishing,

the next one is having their materials delivered,

so you don't have any down time in the actual cranage.

It's an absolute obsession to look at the way the cranes are actually working.

I dream about the cranes when I'm not at work.

'For Karl, this is a career-defining job.

He's never worked on anything this complex - or expensive.

He lives with the knowledge that a week's delay

might cost his employers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And when he sees any deviation from the plan,

he jumps on it.'

That crane right now shouldn't be doing that operation.

So, it means a heated phone call in about five seconds.

Jerry, I'm j

TC3 is on the K braces.

I know, we don't want any delays on that crane, mate.

'Working in a glass box an eighth of a mile in the air is not for everybody.'

I wouldn't like to be up that crane.

If you climb up the crane you get seasick.

It's like that, and it sways all over the place.

Horrible.

'This crane was built especially for the Leadenhall project.

Operatin

a steady hand

and a steady nerve.

Christian has hit his 72 slab target for the day.

The Leadenhall Building is now floored up to level 20.

But, to finish the job on time and on budget,

he must continue at this pace for the next seven months.

As the new year arrives

the steelwork has climbed up

past its neighbors, to the 40th floor.

Locals can't mistake the distinctive form for anything else -

they call it The Cheesegrater.

But its unusual shape is not just the whim

of some architect.

Building in London means adhering

to some of the toughest planning regulations in the world.

The higher you want to go,

the harder it is to get permission.

With a skyscraper,

one concern trumps all the others.

Protecting the view of London's most important landmark -

St Paul's Cathedral.

Rising from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666,

St Paul's is the beating heart of London.

It was the venue for Lord Admiral Nelson's funeral,

and Charles and Diana's wedding.

During the Blitz in World War II,

Winston Churchill ordered fire brigades to save it

before any other building,

because to lose it would destroy Britain's morale.

In the last ten years, high-rise construction

has encroached on St Paul's.

The historic monument risks being lost in a forest of skyscrapers.'

It is like Mission: Impossible

trying to put a tall building with St Paul's,

with all of these key corridors that protect it.

There's nothing in that background

that is actually confusing

the clarity of its shape.

You know, it's one last view, let's just protect that.

We tried a number of buildings

that worked within that.

So we had some that stepped, and followed its profile.

And others that ki

slightly bigger and squarer.

And so we did explore a number of versions of that.

The clients, the

liked the directness of the incline.

'But preserving the clear view of St Paul's

comes at a huge cost.

The wedge-shape means that as the Leadenhall Building goes up,

each floor becomes smaller.'

It's the raison d'etre for the lean

but that gave us then the other design solutions to solve.

And in an industry where the higher the floor,

the more valuable it is,

owners of a skyscraper want more floor space,

not less.'

We approxi

usable space

was about 350,000 square feet.

And they said, "Well, to be honest,

the figure has to begin with a six."

'The solution the architects hit upon is the key feature

that makes this building design unique:

To maximize efficiency,

everything that isn't rentable floor space

will be housed in a separate structure.'

A conventional skyscraper puts all its services -

elevators, restrooms,

and all the mechanical and electrical systems

at the centre of the building,

where it takes up rentable floor space.

In the Leadenhall Building it's all moved to the back,

and packed into an ultra-efficient external spine -

the "north core".

The north core is made up of 139 modular building blocks

called "tables", which stack one on top of the other,

three to a floor.'

The north core has the washrooms in it,

has all the services in it, has the lifts.

So, the office space is comp

So that's the server and this is the served.

'What's really smart about how the north core is being built...

..is that each table comes to the site

fully-loaded with pipe work, electrics,

plumbing and floor plates.

That means it can go up in record time.'

So all the time, just taking pressure off the construction site

and taking pressure off the logistics.

The table units are manufactured

to precise specifications in Northern Ireland.

To keep up with the relentless schedule

they need to be 100 per cent certain

each component will slot exactly into position

once it arrives on-site.

The production line process is familiar,

but here no one has ever had to manufacture

anything this big or this complex before.'

We've had

our techniques quite a lot,

from cutting, drilli

fabrication, final assembly.

For us we've got to make s

it's absolutely perfect -

every weld is absolutely consistently the same.

'Normally, a skyscraper's structural steelwork

is hidden,

but the designers are so proud of this innovation

that they've ordered each table to be sprayed a vivid shade of yellow,

so everyone can see it.

As soon as the paint's dry,

it's rushed across the Irish Sea to central England,

to be fitted out.'

If you just look and you see how tight it is

between each service, how they're so compact.

You can obviously see electrical containment,

hot water, cold water, cooling water, chilled,

sprinkler systems, electrical systems.

'Designing and manufacturing something this sophisticated

is an enormous challenge.

But, if forced to build by conventional means,

in the cramped, congested streets of London

meeting their deadline would be impossible.'

If you had done this in a traditional build,

they would have to get

all these materials,

piece by piece, to the site.

24 hours after landing from Northern Ireland,

the table has everything it needs

to be plugged straight into the building.

March 2013.

The Leadenhall Building is at 551 feet,

two thirds of its final 736 foot height.

It's just one year since the very first north core table

arrived on-site.

In that time, a team of 24 people

has assembled this:

41 floors of pre-fabricated modules.

There are just 18 tables left to fit.

Christian Holliday, the day-shift crane operator,

begins his daily commute.

He needs to be in position, ready to lift,

the moment the delivery trucks pull in.

Otherwise, a carefully choreographed

starts to unravel.'

(MAN) Hoist up, up you come.

Working at a height of 650 feet,

it's now down to Christian to maneuver this 42-ton table

into its final position,

with fraction of an inch precision.

The problem is... he's working blind.

(Low chatter)

Directing Christian from level 41 - 120 feet below -

is his "banksman" Jamie Parry.

Keep jibbing back, keep jibbing back.

Keep coming, mate.

Keep it coming.

'Working blind at such extreme heights

leaves no room for error.'

..a touch as you come down there, mate.

'Faced with the narrowest of timeslots

and the smallest of spaces in which to maneuver...'

- It's a tight fit.

-

'..everyone is counting on this massive piece of steel...'

Just ease that down.

Ease that down.

'..slotting right into place.'

'Securing the tables couldn't be simpler, or faster.

No concrete pouring.

No welding.

All it takes is a handful of bolts

and the 42-ton table is locked into position.

And since each north core level is comprised of just three tables,

working at top speed, the team can install a full level in a single day.'

'They push on into the night.

They're committed to a delivery d

which means that work must run 24/7.

By early May,

the steel frame and precast floors are complete up to level 50.

Just two floors to go until they reach the top.

Two cladding teams follow behind,

transforming the Leadenhall Building from steel to glass.

Traditionally, glass installation requires a large workforce

and space for them to load and operate cranes.

But because the north core is already filled with services,

there's no room to work like this.

Once again, the unique nature of this structure has forced the engineers to innovate.'

Alright, guys?

How's it going?

You OK?

Yeah, good?

'The man in charge of cladding the north core is Phil Sedge.

Today, he's starting work on level 21.

Phil's secret weapon is a revolutionary new system called Cerberus.

Cerberus is a self-raising platform with a monorail

that can be quickly moved from floor to floor.

Glass panels can then be delivered to the right level

and slid around the building into position.

It's a custom-made system designed just for the Leadenhall Building.

Using Cerberus, Phil and a crew of just 30 can clad two floors in a week.

On the sloping south side,

using more traditional cladding methods,

is Phil's younger brother, Andy.'

From the age of 16, I've worked with him.

He's dragged me along.

to help them,

Andy's team simply uses a hoist and manpower

to maneuver their panels into place.

The two brothers aren't just racing to meet a deadline,

they're racing against each other.'

We've both worked on m

projects together.

I think in all sibling rivalry, there'll always be a competitiveness.

I think my side of it is a lot more difficult than the north.

There's more architectural elements,

so I've a lot more finishes to look at.

I've got a much more challenging system.

It's a much more intricate system to install,

so generally I think I've got the harder task.

'The brothers have until August

to finish adding 17 acres of glass to the Leadenhall Building.

It remains to be seen who will reach the finish line first...

Phil and Cerberus?'

Yesterday we managed to get 11 units in, so that was a pretty good day.

'Or Andy sticking to the tried-

They can average about

20 a day for these external units.

In the next 10 weeks,

I believe we'll have the majority of the last sections of th

'The race is on.

But, despite the best laid plans,

Andy and Phil are both at the mercy of something that can't be scheduled:

the British we

Wednesday, Thursday, we were hit with some of the highest winds

we've had since Christmas.

So we've lost a lot to bad weather and high winds.

'Anything over 20mph could easily catch the glass and smash it into the structure.

Each panel is manufactured in China.

Any replacement means a six-week wait.'

We had a 2nd July ta

date to try and achieve

but that's probably slipped a couple of weeks.

And if you keep losing, it gets to a point where you can't cr

Life here has been... a

very stressful.

'Unless Phil can find a way to get back on track,

not only will he lose out to his little brother,

but he's in danger of incurring huge financial penalties.

'It's now June.

The framework is nearing completion

and the team has reached a critical phase in the construction process.

For the past 12 months, surveyor Justin Carmichael

has been tracking what, in any other building, would be a disturbing pattern.'

The top of the building is leaning to the north.

Every five to six weeks we see about 2mm movement.

an ingenious solution to the problem of space,

but loading all the services onto one side

has caused the whole building to move.'

It's an asymmetric building,

so there's more load on the north side of the building

than there is on the south,

which means the building is going to settle differently,

the foundations are going to settle differently on the north and south.

'As the building gets taller, it gets heavier and leans further to the north.

Normally, this level of movement would be But here, these growing pains are not only accounted for...

they were planned.

It's all part of another world-first,

that the engineers have called Active Ali

We allow the build

move sideways

and we monitor it very carefully how much it's moving

and then we pull it back again back to the south.

'The theory is that the Leadenhall Building's steel frame

can be tightened up during the construction process.

This will make it stand up straight.

The building's steel frame,

weighing 20,000 tons, is adjustable.'

It's a very pa

kind of approach.

We're not aware of any other skyscrapers that have tr

'So far, it's only been tried in the lab on a computer model.

Steel erector Carl Martin is about to put the theory to the test.'

Because nobody had done it before, we had to start from scratch.

So they lumbered me with...

said, "This is a good job for you!"

'This extraordinary process is only possible

because of the Leadenhall Building's unique structural frame.

To join vertical columns to horizontal beams and diagonal braces,

the engineers designed 23-ton star-shaped pieces of steel known as "nodes".

When the building was erected,

each of these joints was filled with a number of steel spacers called shims.

By opening the joint,

Carl should be able to remove the necessary number of shims

and correct the building.

First Carl fits giant green clamps either side of the nodes.

He places powerful jacks in each corner.'

Wind it down and lock it off.

'And inserts hydraulic pumps into each jack.

It's the same principle as jacking up a car,

except this is a 52-story skyscraper.'

If

high-pressure hydraulic oil is gonna come out.

I said, "What happens if one of them breaks?"

It would make a big mess.

'The nuts on the megabolts are loosened.

And then 500psi of pressure is released into each jack.

At first, nothing happens.

The joint remains clamped shut.

The pressure is increased.

Still nothing.'

We'll go flat out this time hopefully.

'The pressure is cranked up again.

Each jack is now exerting the equivalent of 220 tons of pressure.

Finally, movement.

The entire structure above this point is now being forced upwards.

Stop.

'Allowing the shims to be removed

of steel shortened.

We took nine today.

But this is the third time.

We took seven last time and eight the time before.

So basically we've gone 24 mil.

'All that remain

to release the pressure and close the joints.

By the time the buildi

has settled into its new position,

the top of the skyscraper has shifted to the south

by almost one inch,

bringing it into line with the floors below.

All the while, the cladding teams have raced against each other

and their deadline.

Their goal is to finish adding 12 acres of glass by August.

For the past month,

Phil's team on the north core has battled unseasonably high winds.

In that time, he's

back to the drawing board

and customized his new cladding system, Cerberus,

to make it more resilient.

What we realized, because of the high winds recently,

we have now put something in place that can deal with that

with this tension wire system.

'No-one's ever tried anything like this before,

so there's a degree of trial and error involved before they get it right.'

As the units come out on the launch area,

they'll actually get attached to those cables.

They run on runners, then it can only move just a little bit in the wind.

That way we reduced it from swaying

and the actual manual labor of trying to hold the unit away from the building.

By the time they've come back rou

the next unit.

You never know, maybe with t

gain something back.

But there is a hell of a lot of work to get to that period

and that point in time.

'Phil's team now to recover lost time.

Keeping the pressure on, he's got younger brother Andy hot on his heels.

I'm sure he'll keep chasing me right to the very end of the project.

We're catching him up.

We'll get there, I'm sure.

I'll pip him to the post at the top.

'Two weeks later,

with the north and south cladding teams

neck-and-neck at level 39,

the final steel beam, at the highest point of the building,

is about to be fitted.

Nightshift manager Ormond Maxwell does the final checks.

'It's known as "topping out" and is the culmination of 17 months' non-stop work.

The last beam of their 11,000-piece steel frame is too long.

'In the end, their only option is to pry open the gap

and wedge in the last beam.

This may be one of the world's

most technologically advanced construction projects,

but sometimes it just comes down to a little b

The topping out may not have gone quite as planned,

but within hours the crew is celebrating

the official completion of the steel mega-frame.

It marks the start of a new phase in the building's construction.'

My role has changed considerably.

I've gone from being the project engineer

in charge of the daily delivery of the structure

to the planning and logistics manager, if you will, on the ground floor.

So I've literally moved right from the top of the building to the bottom.

'Project engineer Karl has moved down to ground level

to begin work on the Galleria,

a show-stopping public space five stories high.

The steel frame has meant we don't have that central core,

so we've managed to free up this huge great space on the ground floor

and really open up the whole building.

The job is coming to an end.

You can see the finishing line.

That final piece of steel work going in

marked the handover between myself and Karl.

So Karl's brought all the structure up from ground level

and it signals now the next stage of the build.

'On any other project, topping out is a milestone

marking the end of major works,

but the Leadenhall Building is not like other skyscrapers

and the most important part of their build is still to come:

fitting out the top four floors of the tower.

They'll contain all the me

and electrical services

that make the building live and breathe.

Normally, a building would put these systems at the very bottom,

in the basement.

But at Leadenhall,

in the fight to maximize rentable floor space,

they're going to cram heating equipment,

cooling towers, chilling modules,

generators, boilers and control rooms

into this space,

right at the top.

Everything

through a small hole left in the roof of the building.

It's an ingenious idea but incredibly tough to execute.

It's gonna be lifted up with the crane from the ground floor,

and it's gonna come in through this opening that you can see just

Lowered down onto le

It's probably gonna be one of the most challenging parts of the p

'The issue is that, up here, space is tight.

The floors are just a quarter the si

of the ground level.

Using 3D modeling,

engineers tried 20 different configurations

before working out how they could pack everything in.'

As you can see, it's already tight for space.

So once the cladding's installed and this is all enclosed,

it's going to feel a lot smaller as well,

so it's going to be extremely challenging space-wise

to make sure we get things in the right sequence

and then moved into their final positions straight away.

Without that 3D model,

I don't think it would have been possible up here.

three months longer than anticipated,

Nick needs the systems installation to go without a hitch.

He's got to fit 25 units by November.'

The way the build's gone at the moment, the structure has overrun.

So, there is a r

of pressure now

to try and get the plant fit-out finished up at these levels.

'But nothing can happen until the cladding's done.

On the floors below, all eyes are on the Sedge Brothers.

11 months ago, they began a race to cover the Leadenhall Building

with 75,000 square feet of glass.

Older brother Phil is working on the north core,

using the new monorail system Cerberus.

While younger brother Andy is sticking with good old-fashioned manpower

on the south side.

They're approaching the newly-built finish line,

and it's clear who will be taking first place.'

Yeah, Phil's beaten me.

As you can see now, we've finished,

got all the way up to the top on level 48 and it's all done now.

So it's really good.

'Phil's pioneering new installation system, Cerberus,

has boosted his team to the top.'

Andy knows that I always win.

He's having to live with that unfortunately.

We're finished.

It's a good achievement.

'Andy still has seven floors of glasswork to g

I'm on my last level of glass going in.

I've got the internals to go in after that.

But with regards to the works, yeah,

I'm always gonna say mine was a bit tougher.

'It's 23 months since the major building work began at Leadenhall.

The steel frame is complete and standing up straight.

All the floors have been laid and the cladding is

It means that it's time for the critical power systems to be installed

on the topmost floors of the 736-foot tall tower.

First up, one of four 18-ton generators.

It's a delicate operation.

One small knock could damage the $1.4 milli

I mean, you're taking this thing seven meters away from the cab window.

And that's gotta b

12-14m long, that.

So that's what worries you when it's windy, if it spins on you.

Right, now we're going down through the letterbox from 51 down to 48.

The hole we're goi

is virtually the size of the machine.

So, we gotta take this real slow once we get

You'll see a couple of lads down there are gonna help us on the

Once w

through the top here,

Brian the banksman will take over for us.

'Jimmy must slide the generator through a narrow slot

that's been left in the attic's roof.'

Once we go through the top here, that hole narrows.

As we

it gets narrower.

So, I don't know if you can see from there,

but we've only got inches...

When we get down to the next floor, it'll literally be inches.

Keep coming, Jim.

Keep her coming, Jim, keep her coming.

Keep her coming, boy.

(Further instructions over radio)

Are you happy with this?

- Alright?

- Yeah, come down.

Come down easy, Ji

'The first key piece is in.

Now everything else must be positioned around it.

By following the detailed 3D model,

Jimmy and the team install four floors of systems

that they are able to claw back the three months lost to the steelwork overrun.

With all of the main systems installed,

they're ready to plug into the power grid,

flick the switch and bring the Leadenhall Building to life.

Almost 40,000 components have been assembled in under two years,

a European construction record of this size.

The architects, engineers and construction workers at the Leadenhall Building

have pushed the limits of what can be a

in the smallest of spaces and tightest of schedules.'

When we've been engrossed in it as much as we have,

it's very hard to stand back and see

just what we've achieved over the last two years

and we really have achieved something very special

in a very short period of time.

It's an absolute celebrati

engineering.

'In the heart of an ancient city,

the

arrived...

..right on schedule.

Next time...

rising from the rubble of Ground Zero,

America's tall

Of course it's big.

It's the biggest curtain wall job in the West.

'The toughest building anywhere.'

Built it taller, built it

stronger, built it tougher.

I changed the skyline.

And that's an awesome feeling.

'It's New York's new landmark.

One World Trad

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