Basis:

In the early hours of the morning between February 12 and 13, 2005, the Windsor building, considered to be the first smart skyscraper built in Madrid, was completely destroyed by fire.

It was built at the heart of Madrid's financial district, near Paseo de la Castellana and adjacent to other tall buildings. The lower floors of the building were occupied by business premises connected to other nearby buildings.

The building also had another special feature: an underground road junction existed (and still exists) in its basement levels, which a considerable number of vehicles drive through everyday.

The Windsor tower, as it was known, measured 106 m in height and had 32 floors, with the center of the building containing the vertical conduits for building installations such as lifts, sewers and service stairs. These vertical conduits helped spread the flames that destroyed destroy the facade from the roof to the 17th floor.

It so happens that at the time of the fire, some renovation work was being carried out on the building and a crane had been installed on the core of the top floor, further complicating the situation.

Once the fire had been extinguished and it was established that the building was unstable and in danger of collapsing, potentially affecting adjacent buildings, the department of town planning, housing and infrastructures of Madrid City Council took charge of its demolition by subcontracting.

The Applus+ solution for this new challenge

As the first act to be considered at the time of demolition work, and as it involved an emergency because the real situation of the building was unknown, legal coverage from an occupational health and safety point of view was decided on as a policy. It involved an exceptional measure, without precedent in Spain. For this purpose, an initial meeting was held with the town-planning management of the Madrid City Council, the regional occupational health and safety Institute of the Regional Government of Madrid, the provincial labour and social security Inspectorate and Applus+ as the company that would assume the functions of health and safety coordinator in the execution phase.

At this meeting, legal cover under Spanish Royal Decree 1627/1997 was chosen, considering the following conditions:

• An initial Notification of work was to be submitted, indicating that there was as yet no project.
• As there was no project and therefore no health and safety study, instead of having the demolition contractor prepare a Health and Safety Plan, a document called "Risk assessment and preventive measures" was to be drawn up, containing the analysis of the work units that would be performed, which would be completed by all the work procedures to be performed as the work was carried out (use of remote-control robots for concrete-cutting operations or collecting debris, etc ) approved by the health and safety coordinator and the project management.

Aside from the exceptional circumstances of this situation and given that the building was dismantled floor-by-floor using heavy cranes, the innovative health and safety measures taken by Applus+ at the beginning of the demolition included:

• A physical fence defining the perimeter of the work site
• Bracing of all the basement floors and underground roads of the building
• Protection of nearby buildings using a scaffolding structure and plates to avoid damage due to falling debris or structural elements during the demolition work
• The positioning of two heavy-duty mobile cranes from which demolition work would be carried out, either by lifting the baskets from which the companies would work or else by supporting material to be demolished and mechanical cutting tools for cutting specific structural elements.
• A specific procedure was developed for lifting workers using two mobile baskets, including the basket construction calculations as well as engineering approval for the design. These documents were delivered to the Inspectorate of Work and Social Security to receive approval of their application.

Advantages for our customer

Despite the enormous complexity of the job, no injuries or damage to property were recorded.

Faced with such an extremely urgent situation, we were able to provide an immediate and effective response. During the almost 7 months in which the services were performed, Applus+ provided the customer with a health and safety coordinator who was permanently on-site.

The customer's expectations were largely exceeded given the speed with which the building was dismantled, since the work was completed four months ahead of schedule.

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