Building a piece of history: the Remember Me Covid-19 memorial

A small team from Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects, led by Project Manager, Katherine Cary, were selected as the delivery partner for the job in May 2020. They were on site the following September.

St Paul's is open to visitors from around the world who can join daily prayers or tour its vast structure. Working amongst this schedule of events, the chaos of Covid and the tight times constraints set by the client - the build needed to be completed in 6-months - the team set about planning their programme.

They took into consideration times of worship, access issues and a whole range of constraints that come from working in the centre of the large city, in a place revered by millions.

Katherine says: "Sound was a major issue for us. If the organist was playing, we couldn't open the door because it would cause the tuning to go haywire, so on occasions we had to get materials in within a 1-minute window. Even one hit with a hammer resonated around the entire cathedral. We had to pick the best time to do the loud work, normally when the organ was playing!"

The elliptical glulam structure was designed by Caroe Architecture with Connolly Wellingham and was crafted in the UK, clad in decorative British oak. It's modern but also sympathetic to Sir Christopher Wren's stunning cathedral. And rather poetically, when learning about the provenance of the trees used for the structure, the team found out that, within them, was a tree from the same forest Wren had used when seeking timber for the building.