Underground Car Park at the House of Commons, London: Design and Contractual Aspects

Lack of dissemination of information about the publication by BSI of new structural standards and amendments to those has been the subject of complaint to this column on more than one occasion. Mr. C. Osgerby raises the issue again and makes an ingenious suggestion : You recently referred to an amendment to BS449 and in doing so highlighted the difficulty that engineers have in finding out if Codes and BS have recently been amended. The situation would seem to be that no one will accept the responsibility of informing (or of failing to inform) members of such amendments. I would like to suggest a possible solution. Verulam

The basic problem was to construct an underground car park 18.5 m deep in close proximity to the priceless historic buildings of the Palace of Westminster, including Westminster Hall the Houses of Commons and Big Ben Clock Tower. The problem was accentuated by the fact that there is no building over the car park and therefore the full effects of the free heave of the London clay will be realised.

The paper describes the construction at Ardyne Point, Argyll, Scotland, of the first gravity concrete structure to be built in Scotland for the North Sea oil and gas fields, Gas Treatment Platform 1 for the Frigg Fieldof Elf-Norge A/S. Brief descriptions of the Frigg Field and of the basic structure are given and the environmental conditions for which it has been designed. J.A. Derrington