22 Bishopsgate, London

Currently the tallest office building in London, 22 Bishopsgate was originally planned as a tower building named ‘The Pinnacle’.

Colt’s experience and expertise overcome design challenges at the UK’s tallest commercial building

Standing at 62 storeys tall, 22 Bishopsgate is the tallest commercial building in the UK and is also the second largest building of any use currently in the UK – only the Shard alone surpasses it. Naturally, our client (AXA IM) needed to ensure they had the best team working on the building’s life safety systems.

In addition to being the UK’s most experienced supplier and maintainer of smoke control systems, Colt was also awarded this project because of our existing, strong relationships with other respected businesses within the building industry. In this case, we worked closely from the beginning of the project with both Multiplex (main contractor) and Hotchkiss (M&E contractor) to develop a smoke extract system that could meet the performance and regulatory criteria for a building of this scale.

Producing numerous CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) models in the system design stage to pinpoint any potential issues and create the most efficient system, we developed a creative solution that provided effective smoke extraction throughout the building’s two stair cores. Considering the enormous height of the building, one of the key considerations was how to extract smoke from both the top and bottom levels in the same place. The usual approach would be for a fan to extract the smoke up through the core of the building and out through the roof. However, with 62 floors to contend with, this wasn’t an option here. This problem was overcome by utilizing the main extract point in the middle of the building on level 25 to extract lower floors’ smoke up and higher floors’ smoke down and out at the same place.

Colt’s experienced team of operatives completed the installation smoothly and delivered a fully compliant smoke extract system on time and within budget.

  • Project:
    • 22 Bishopsgate
  • Location:
    • London
  • Building Type:
    • Commercial
  • Client:
    • AXA IM
  • M&E Consultant:
  • Architect:
    • PLP Architecture
  • Main Contractor:
  • M&E Contractor:
    • Hotchkiss
  • Colt products: