Utilising our Design for Manufacture & Assembly strategy, we designed the major elements of the building’s services to be manufactured off site at our factory in the West Midlands. This included not just the structural components of the service core, but also modular plant and control rooms as well as a significant number of riser assemblies. Once completed and delivered to site, our expert teams led their assembly and final commissioning.
The challenge
With its busy inner city location and the structure’s site footprint having no lay-down areas, a key challenge for CHt was to develop an offsite approach. Particular consideration was given at the design development / technical design stages with regard to the logistics element, so that the modules would be designed in relation to maximum transportation limitations, onsite access and our lifting strategy, so that a seamless process was in place to support the construction schedule.
Our approach
We digitally engineered a model to interrogate the design to a high level of detail in conjunction with the client and design teams. This improved our understanding of the ambitious structure and built in flexibility to adjust the permanent works design.
Using our Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) philosophy, modular components were delivered and installed on site, avoiding the risks of traditional onsite methods to offer the benefits of lean manufacturing, time, safety and sustainability. Site logistics were digitally coordinated with overnight deliveries scheduled to reduce disturbance and traffic.
The engineering behind our delivery
The main plant is situated within the basement and attic levels, which includes central chilled water plant and fully packaged cooling towers, HV standby generation consisting of four sets situated at levels 47 and 48 and boilers c/w gas booster sets. The programme was reduced as the high level on floor service installation and services within the risers were then fully modularised and delivered and installed with the steel frame of the building. On-floor plantrooms were completed and tested offsite prior to delivery, then dropped into position for module connection.
This then helped reduce risk during on-site commissioning and ensured a high quality snag free installation.