Ever wondered what it takes to window clean glass on the Shard, London? Well, before you start pulling out the calculator, stretching your arm out, closing one eye whilst ‘thumbing’ the horizon with your tongue poked out and all from the comfort of your Shard vantage point. Let us just take a look at some building stats!
The building has 306 flights of stairs with a total floor space of 27 acres and it is the largest building in Europe. So, remember dont try lugging your rope access equipment up the stairs. Try, instead, one of the 44 lifts in the building that will take you 1,016ft to the top.
Now – how about bidding on this job?
There are 11,000 glass panes in the building. The area of the glass façade is 56,000 sq metres (602,779 sq ft), which equals eight football pitches. Each facet forms a shard, a plane of glass gently inclined inwards, rising towards the top. The corners of the development are open and the shards do not touch, allowing the building to “breathe”.
It takes 17 IRATA Accredited window cleaners 3 months to clean. Once the clean has been completed, they start the whole thing all over again. The frequency of cleans for the Shard is 4 times per year.
1,300 Unger squeegee rubbers are used per clean ( 5,200 pieces per year) on this iconic building that towers over the London skyline. The spend on squeegee rubber alone is around £10,500 per year.
Let’s have some fun: Window Cleaning Magazine would be interested in your bid on this site, please comment 🙂
