FMS: Facade Maintenance System at the Lakhta Center Tower

In terms of the innovative solutions used in the project, Lakhta Center is the undisputed national leader. Its facade service system is also unique - for a building of a twisting and flaring shape, the designers of GORPROJECT have developed a special mechanism allowed to handle every facet singularly. 

The accumulated experience of operating high-rise building facades using classical means of personnel access and delivering spare parts and materials for repair to the working area shows that they feature very low efficiency and usability. When crane units with cradles are available, operating organizations try not to use them for facade cleaning due to a difficult launching process, low speed and inconvenience to work. Instead they prefer to involve industrial climbers, despite obvious danger in the performance of these works.

The described situation is typical for high-rise buildings and buildings with a relatively simple shape since complex facade surfaces are even more inaccessible when crane units are used. Therefore, maintenance access was considered among the most important issues when designing Lakhta Center building facades.

The complex geometry, large areas of facades that need to be cleaned and repaired, and the Lakhta Center building status required developing new access principles. It was decided to abandon the standard systems with suspended cradles and develop a new system instead that did not require additional works on the side of the Facade Maintenance System (FMS) operators for movement along the facades.

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Materials provided by GORPROJECT, CJSC. Text: Alexander Drozdov, Sergey Lakhman