The residents of the former Olympic Village, now called East Village, in east London, were understandably surprised when workers, who were supposed to be building two new residential towers next door to their homes, started constructing two big industrial sheds instead. Their suspicions that something was amiss were confirmed by the appearance of the words "Factory 1" and "Factory 2" in big lettering on the sides of the sheds. And surprise turned to astonishment when the structures started to rise into the air, revealing the perfectly finished facades of two residential buildings below. What the locals did not know was that this unusual project was a bold experiment in offsite construction pioneered for the first time in the UK by contractor Mace on this project. Victory Plaza comprises two 26 and 29-storey towers of a buy-to-let scheme for developer Get Living. In the "rising factory" process, the sheds work as factories - used to construct the building structure including the slabs, services, bathrooms and the cladding - and jump up floor by floor in the same manner as jump-form rigs used for core construction.
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