Comment
NSC 5
BARRETT
STEEL LIMITED
Headline sponsors:
Gold sponsors: AJN Steelstock Ltd | Ficep UK Ltd | Kingspan Limited |
National Tube Stockholders and Cleveland Steel & Tubes |
Peddinghaus Corporation | voestalpine Metsec plc | Wedge Group Galvanizing Ltd
Silver sponsors: Hadley Group | Jack Tighe Ltd | Tata Steel | Trimble Solutions (UK) Ltd
Bronze sponsors: Barnshaw Section Benders Limited | Hempel | Joseph Ash Galvanizing | Jotun Paints |
Kaltenbach Limited | Kloeckner Metals UK | Sherwin-Williams | Tension Control Bolts Ltd |
Voortman Steel Machinery
February 18
Steel captures
collaborative benefits
NSC’s Annual Review of projects featured in the magazine throughout last year has been delivered with a range
of construction magazines in recent weeks. It can be found on the NSC website if you missed your copy.
The projects in the Annual Review are selected to show the diversity of project size and type, and geographical
spread of outstanding steel construction projects, which NSC aims to do in every issue. Increasingly they reflect
a growing emphasis on collaboration and transparency as the construction industry responds to client demands
for new ways of working.
The O2 centre in London is a project that shows steel’s circular economy agenda advantages, with the
foundation slab being reused on a retail project that is designed for deconstruction. The design was informed by
being able to access drawings from the steelwork contractor who originally worked on The O2 some years ago, a
level of collaboration that was made straightforward by taking advantage of the Building Information Modelling
capabilities of software that the steel construction sector has been using for some 30 years.
In Edinburgh close collaboration among the construction team is delivering prestige apartments at the
Grade A listed Donaldson’s School to the west of Edinburgh city centre which is being given a new lease of life
by reconfiguring the interior. Steel has also been selected for an adjacent new building thanks to its ability to
provide the desired floor-to-ceiling heights while keeping the overall building height to an acceptable level at
this sensitive location. The parabolic frontage is a striking feature of the new build elements, formed without the
use of curved sections by using facetted steelwork.
Over in Dublin, where the local economy looks like it is recovering strongly from the travails of recent years, we
visited the old Sir John Rogerson Quay area on the south bank of the Liffey which is being given a new role as a
commercial and retail landmark, with a steel frame providing the open-plan spaces that are popular with tenants.
In London a BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ rating is the target for a project at Kings Cross where steel was selected
to replace a concrete alternative by providing a more economical way of achieving long spans and integrated
services. These are features strongly valued by tenants and the 12-storey building has been fully pre-let.
Collaboration was also a feature of our foray to Cumbria where steel has been selected to provide Whitehaven
with two new school buildings because of its speed of construction and flexibility. The construction team won a
race against the onset of winter in its bid to create a watertight structure before the Cumbrian rainy season took
its usual firm grip. Steel is tried and tested for schools, with its built in flexibility and large, clear spans allowing for
future changes of use like changing class sizes.
Collaborative working has always been a feature of the service that steelwork contractors pride themselves
on delivering. Just as the sector was ready to respond to fresh demands for BIM on projects because it had for
long worked that way anyway, the new focus on collaboration is being fully supported by a steel sector eager to
respond.
Nick Barrett - Editor
For further information about steel construction and Steel for Life please visit
www.steelconstruction.info or www.steelforlife.org
Steel for Life is a wholly owned subsidiary of BCSA
/www.steelconstruction.info
/
/www.steelconstruction.info
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/uk
/home.html
/
/
/
/
/www.steelconstruction.info
/www.steelforlife.org