Rackline Set Sail on Maritime Museum Project

Rackline has recently been awarded a prestigious mobile racking fit out contract at the Sammy Ofer Wing, currently under construction at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Rackline fought off competition from several major racking companies in order to win the tender process. Major factors in the award of the contract were the design layout plans Rackline put forward and the ‘value for money’ that the proposal offered.

The £35 million Sammy Ofer Wing project is funded by the National Lottery, and a generous £20 million donation by Israeli philanthropist and ex Royal Navy sailor Sammy Ofer. The world class collection will be housed over three separate floors within the newly refurbished wing and will occupy approx 450m² of floor space containing over 8,500 linear metres of collections.

The collections are being relocated from three off-site reserve stores in order to centralise recourses for research, increase public access and dramatically reduce retrieval times.

The vast archival collection consists of such items as crew lists, personal papers, atlases, library reference books, rare pamphlets, rare journals, charts, maps, drawings and many other items. The collection includes priceless documents such as the personal papers of Admiral Nelson and Captain James Cook.

Rackline will be working in conjunction with the National Maritime Museum and contractors Bovis Lend Lease on the fit out/installation stages. Rackline mobile racking floor tracks are scheduled to be installed within a concrete screed on all three floors during June 2010, with the installation of the final racking components during February 2011.

The new wing will be opened in time for the Museum’s 75th anniversary and the 2012 London Olympics, in which the Museum will host the equestrian events.

Written by Andy Reed, Technical/Project Manager.