5th April 2024

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

Project Manager, Kat Cary, describes the unique experience of building The Remember Me Covid-19 memorial at St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Remember Me Covid-19 memorial at St Paul’s Cathedral was a project like no other. A tribute to those who died during the pandemic, housed within one of London’s most iconic buildings. The first project of its kind to be built inside St Paul’s for nearly 150 years.

A small team from Sir Robert McAlpine Special Projects, led by Project Manager, Katharine 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.

Katharine 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.


In terms of size this was a tiny project with no real working room on site. But in terms of everything else it may as well have been 10 times its size. At one point we were working with 14 different expert trades.

Read more From Katharine Cary, Project Manager
Katharine Cary

Katharine Cary, Project Manager

Katharine Cary, Project Manager

In terms of size this was a tiny project with no real working room on site. But in terms of everything else it may as well have been 10 times its size. At one point we were working with 14 different expert trades.

The whole programme of works was, as it should be, very considered. The project was unusual and, at times, a bit of a challenge, but it was also completely wonderful and something I am incredibly proud to have been involved in.

close From Katharine Cary, Project Manager

Inside St Paul’s Cathedral

Katharine and her small team worked closely with the client to make sure this project was completed on schedule so that it could be enjoyed by the thousands of people who funded it. It now sits proudly in the Middlesex Chapel within the North Transept of the building. The entrance to this area remained closed for years after it was bombed during WW2. It is now open to the public.

Kat is a finalist in the prestigious Construction Manager of the Year Awards held by the CIOB on 9th April.

Watch the video below to learn more about the project.

Building the Remember Me Covid 19 Memorial at St Paul's Cathedral

[Music]
One of the biggest highlights was actually  just being part of the cathedral life. 
So, our site was really small,  but we were right on the heart of 
the cathedral floor. So, we had to  work around all their major events. 
So, you know working in the  cathedral at Christmas time. 
So, you'd have you know, the Nativity,  you'd have all sorts of amazing 
events going on that you had  to kind of immerse yourself in 
and be a part of the cathedral life. So,  
I'd definitely say that was one of my highlights working here.
This is undoubtedly one of the most  challenging projects I've ever worked on, 
maybe that I will ever work on. I would  say working in a cathedral environment 
is particularly challenging because  you're working in a building 
that's designed to reverberate  sound and working on that 
in the heart of the cathedral floor,  you had the general public next door, 
you had hourly services. So, you  know, we did some quick tallies up 
of some of the statistics. We  actually manage the project 
around 34 major events, over 1,800 hourly prayers.
You know, I'll never work on  a project again where I've got 
to plan an hourly prayer or Eucharist  service in my programme of works, 
but we just worked with the building,  you know, we'd know what organ player 
would be playing what day and who  would be louder, so there were certain 
opportunities that we could then  have louder works coordinated around 
an organ that's so unique and special  to working in a cathedral environment. 
There was a huge amount of challenges  actually just getting materials 
into the building. So, a lot of our  larger materials all had to come through 
the West Front, which is you  know the main famous facade of 
St Paul's Cathedral. So, a lot of  our works would have to be before 
the visitors would come in in the  morning, so we'd be here at you 
know 4 o'clock in the morning 5 o'clock in the morning.
We'd be setting up out front and  we'd have to lift items, materials, 
over 17 linear meters worth of  steps which you know is a challenge 
in itself when it feels like you've  got the whole of the city of London 
watching what you're up to. Then  getting them into the building, I always 
remember on my first day Martin  Fletcher, the clerk of works here 
said Kat, you know you can only  have the doors open for one minute. 
The cathedral doors open for one minute,  and I was thinking okay, that's a new site 
constraint, and the reason was on  the bottom, sort of right hand side 
of our site was the cathedral organ.  So, if we had the doors open for 
any more than a minute, we could risk the  organ having to be retuned, which would 
have been a huge cost to the cathedral.  So, you know there were so many unique 
site constraints with this project that  were hugely challenging, but what we did 
as a project team was to work with the  cathedral, and work with their agenda, 
and their way of managing the  building, rather than against it 
and we had the best time. You  know, it's an amazing project 
that we're all incredibly proud of.
So, the impact of this project, although  it's a small project, has been absolutely 
huge. It was actually my first project  on my own. So, it's my first role 
as project manager. So, I feel very  grateful to the cathedral and obviously 
to Sir Robert McAlpine for giving me the  opportunity. I learned so much you know, 
I think on the smaller projects there isn't  a huge great big team so you do have 
to get stuck in and do a little bit  of everything. You know, there were some 
nights where I was mopping the  floors and you know doing all sorts. 
I had to do everything myself on  this project, so it was a huge, huge 
learning curve, but a fantastic opportunity.
The thing that I'm most proud of, I think  working in an environment like this you 
are or certainly I was very conscious  that you're building a piece of History. 
So, inside the cathedral this  was the the Portico project was 
the biggest, most significant modern  intervention in over 150 years. 
So, you know, opportunities like  that don't come along very often, so I was 
very conscious that we needed to  build something of the highest quality 
because in my mind I just thought, gosh,  if, you know, Wren was walking through 
here, I would want to know that he, you  know, came through with his little book 
and gave it a tick as if to say "I'm happy  with that" and, you know, that's what we set  
out to achieve and that's what we've done. We've created a memorial, so there's a  
huge social impact with this project. 
You know, people will come  here and reflect on some pretty 
challenging and terrible times with Covid and we have,  
we've built a piece of amazing history here that's going to outlive all of us.
[Music]

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