ST Benedict's Roman Catholic Upper School

Project: St Benedict's RCU School, Bury St. Edmunds

Client: Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia

Architect: Hoopers 

Contractor: SEH French

Project Outline:

This project involves the construction of a standalone two storey teaching block. The Architectural features of the building are the masonry elevations, which are to be constructed from specialist metric brickwork, along with recessed brick slip panels and oversized window reveals. Some elevations also contain a high percentage of glazing. The principal structure takes the form of a steel frame with precast concrete floors. Attention to detail and the ability to work closely with the design team has been essential to ensure integration of the steel frame with the masonry cladding. An extensive ground investigation was commissioned on the site with window sampling, probing of chalk subsoils and percolation testing for soakaway design. Foundations consist of traditional trench fill concrete with pads at column locations.

Constable Road, Ipswich

Project: Constable Road, Ipswich

Architect: Shiel Architecture

Contractor: Contract managed by client

Project Outline:

Works to extensively remodel a property in Ipswich are now complete. It's hard to believe, but much of the original structure is retained beneath the various extensions, projections and cladding which now cleverly 'cloak' the property. Superstructures provided a full structural design service including the design of large steel beams to support first floor and roof structures to create the open plan living areas at ground floor. We also designed steel ridge beams and cranked frames to facilitate the clients requirements for a vaulted roof and fully glazed gable to the master bedroom. The client did a fantastic job, self project managing the build achieving extremely high quality of workmanship throughout.  

Service Riser Installation, Nokia UK

Project: Design of External Service Riser

Contractor: Metalwork Services Ltd.

Project Outline:

Our involvement in this project was as part of the design and build team developing a solution to construct an external service riser for an existing building in Cambridge. The existing building was a modern steel framed structure with thin composite concrete floors and a colded rolled steel cladding system, meaning It was not possible to directly fix the riser to the building elevation.The building was also fully occupied. Our solution was to suspend the service riser frame from cantilevering steels at roof level, with horizontal restriant provided at each floor level.

The riser was prefabricated in 3 sections which were bolted together on site at ground level with all the ducting and cladding being fixed prior to lifting. The complete riser was lifted in a single operation using two cranes. Superstructures undertook complex design and analysis of the riser frame through all stages of the crane lift to ensure deflection limits were not exceeded - maintaining the integrity of the cladding and ducting on the frame. The riser was succesfully lifted  and installed with minimal disturbance to the building fabric or its current occupiers.

The Shard, London

Project: The Shard - Escalator Base

Project Outline:

Superstructures have been fortunate enough to play their part in the design of Europe's tallest building - The Shard.  We were commissioned to provide full reinforced concrete details and scheduling for a main entrance escalator base. The complex shape of the base required intricate detailing of the reinforcement. Drawings and details were split in to seven pouring sequnces to provide a design that was sensible to construct.