King's was founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829. The Main Building, between the Strand and the Embankment, dates from that period, blending architecturally with the neighbouring Somerset House. It is joined to the 13-storey Strand Building, built in the 1970s.

Upgrading of electrical services in the Strand Building became necessary due to the growth in electrical demand and environmental conditions. In the first phase of a multi-stage programme, Adlec Installations Ltd installed a distribution system to cater for the existing demand plus a percentage for future developments.

The new main switchboard had to be designed in three sections for installation at different levels in the building because there was no space for a single unit. Installation work had to be carried out with a minimum of downtime for College departments; this entailed installing and energising switchboards progressively as the old boards were taken out.

About 250m of Mempower XP 1300A low impedance busbar trunking and Mempower MP (medium power) 630A busbar trunking has been installed. This includes risers serving the 13 floors of the Strand Building. 600kVAR of power factor correction has also been provided.
MEM Engineers worked with The College's Estates Department and Consulting Engineers, Peter R. Jones and Associates, to develop a suitable distribution system for the building.

The main site supply is provided by two 75OkVA transformers in a London Electricity substation. The incoming section of the new switchboard has been installed in the main switchroom but limited space, coupled with the need to keep the old switchboard live, meant that the essential and non-essential services sections of the new board had to be separated from the incoming section. A cable chamber has been adapted to take these panels.

One transformer feeds the main busbar riser through a 1 250A Memshield ACB bus-coupler on the main intake panel. The other transformer feeds another 1250A Memshield ACB on the new non-essential services panel. A connection from the load side of this switch returns to the main bus-coupler so that either transformer can feed the entire system (subject to load-shedding). All these connections are made in 1350A Mempower XP low impedance busbar trunking. A new layout with numerous offsets and angles was necessary to interconnect the panels.

The non-essential panel provides for 24 outgoing ways, only half of which are currently taken up. One of these is a 630A cable feeder to the new essential services panel; another is a 630A Mempower MP busbar feeder to a riser serving the four basement levels of the Strand Building. Protection and control is provided by MEM fuse combination switches. The size of this panel necessitated construction in two sections at right-angles to one-another to fit into the space available in the newly formed switch room.

The new essential services panel is fed from the non-essential panel and incorporates provision for supply from an emergency generator.

Another of the constraints on the installation was that the existing risers passed through the switchboards at the different floor levels. This meant that new panels had to be installed progressively from the eight-floor downwards, isolating and cutting back the old risers as the work progressed.

The new 1350A riser was installed in advance so that the new switchboards could be tapped off this as they were installed.

All risers are three-phase but for safety each floor is served entirely from one phase, except where three-phase loads are connected. Space restrictions also meant that lighting and small power could not be incorporated in the switchboards so these are housed in separate MCB distribution boards close to the sub-distribution boards.

Adlec engineers worked largely at night and weekends to install the switchboards and the bulk of the work was done during the summer vacation. In a typical operation to replace a switchboard on one floor of the building, the Adlec team would begin enabling works on Friday night. Power to the existing riser would be switched off between midnight and 4.00am on Saturday morning to enable the old switchboard to be withdrawn and the riser trunking cut back. Power would then be restored to the floors below and installation of the new switchboard would continue over the weekend so that supplies on that floor could be restored by Monday morning.

This programme called for close cooperation between engineers at Adlec and MEM. Switchboards had to be designed to fit the confined spaces available and typically delivered on a Wednesday for installation the following weekend.

Some of the busbar trunking, involving numerous offsets and angles, could only be manufactured as work progressed. Site measurements would be taken on a Monday and busbar sections would be manufactured by Mempower in Birmingham in time for installation the following weekend.