The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is installing a new lifting bridge at Canary Wharf to support the increased demand for crossing created by new local developments. This area also offers some of the last deep docks on the Thames, allowing vessels such as RRS Sir David Attenborough, tall ships like Götheborg of Sweden and various international Navy ships to moor in a central location.
While the bridge would greatly benefit connectivity in the area, it would come at the cost of mooring space for the Canal and Rivers Trust (CRT) and, as a result, the original planning permission application had objections for the client to overcome.
Beckett Rankine conducted a feasibility study for a pontoon that would compensate for this loss of mooring space, to support the client’s planning application and actively mitigate the concerns.
The pontoon had to:
Four options were explored, presenting a variety of pontoon designs and placements with thorough assessments of their strengths and drawbacks. We also provided additional variations and value engineering to suggest how each design could be further optimised for better efficiency.
These designs informed the London Borough’s subsequent planning application, leading to success when the new application featuring one of our proposals was accepted to be progressed.
