Cladding the factory of the future

The Advanced Manufactur- ing Research Centre (AMRC) dubbed ‘the Factory of the Fu- ture’ has recently been com- pleted by Bowmer & Kirkland for the University of Sheffield.

The facility houses the lat- est manufacturing equipment and state-of-the-art produc- tion capabilities to enable businesses to trial new devel- opments on a full scale com- mercial production capacity.

The steel framed building, erected by Conder Structures incorporates roofing and clad- ding products manufactured by

Architectural Profiles (APL). The APL Energi System used on the AMRC is based on a StrongBak structural wall framing system which is said to be one of the fastest meth- ods of total building enclosure

and air seal.
The Energi System was

able to achieve a 0.2 w/m2/0c insulation performance against a Buildings Regulations re- quirement of 0.35 and air seal of 2.71m3/hr/m2. Both of these are considered by BREEAM to be in the ‘Excellent’ rating category.