Hills ensures that the show goes on at Royal Opera House

Two performances of ‘Tosca’ at the Royal Opera House in London went ahead thanks to careful planning by Hills Electrical & Mechanical for the lifting of new standby generators at the nearby BT in Covent Garden and the closure of 200 m of Bow Street for a whole weekend recently. The road closures around one of the West End’s busiest tourist destinations were necessary to enable the giant crane to be assembled by a second crane before manoeuvring the generators into position. The crane had a 24 m main boom, plus a 44 m luffing boom and was balanced with a 76 t counterweight to reach over the 10-storey BT building and ease the two 15 t generators through two small wells into the basement and remove three old diesel generators. The 1.1 MW generators sets are part of a £2 million upgrade of the power supply for BT Covent Garden.