Claridge’s Hotel

In 2015 when the owners of arguably the most famous hotel in the world wanted to extend the property, the only viable option was to go down. The challenge of constructing a five-storey basement beneath a working hotel, frequented by the rich and famous, was taken up by contractor McGee and designer Arup. Such a sensitive project required the best possible monitoring, so they turned to Geotechnical Observations for advice. We designed and installed a network of liquid levelling cells. Constraints within the operational building layout meant that it was impossible to link all of the cells in the same system so a total of nine dependent systems were created. Each system was connected to the next virtually to relate the movements to a stable point outside the zone of influence.