Following further correspondence with the City and Atkins regarding the Barbican Podium Phase II works, an important clarification has now been provided in writing.
Atkins have confirmed that they were not asked to consider the podium drainage system from an estate-wide system level perspective, but rather to focus on the specific water ingress issues affecting the Phase II area.
This appears to confirm that the current project should be understood as a localised surface intervention rather than part of a coordinated estate-wide drainage strategy.
That distinction matters because the City’s recent FOI response also confirmed that:
no estate-wide hydraulic modelling of the podium drainage system has been undertaken,
no comprehensive estate-wide drainage strategy exists, and
no drainage maintenance records are held for recent years.
I have now asked for further clarification regarding what specific assessment of the drainage network itself has been undertaken even within the Phase II footprint.
For example, while trial holes and waterproofing investigations may help identify how water is entering the structure, they do not in themselves explain how the condition or performance of the drainage runs has been assessed, nor how confidence has been established that the proposed interventions will provide an effective long-term drainage solution.
Given the scale, cost and disruption associated with the proposed demolition and strip-back works, it seems reasonable that these technical questions should be satisfactorily resolved before irreversible enabling works proceed.
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