The building’s long column-free spaces
have provided the university with plenty of
flexibility.
In the upper floors, this flexibility
provides the ability to move partitions
between classrooms to suit future use
requirements and also means any services
for new equipment will be unrestricted.
On the ground floor, it provides open-plan
workshop spaces for positioning machinery.
Stability is provided by the precast
cores and precast planks acting as a
floor diaphragm. As part of the floor, a
lightweight T-section allowed for a flat
soffit, but during construction, temporary
bracing was required before the planks were
installed.
The steel bracing, erected by the steelwork
contractor Elland Steel Structures, allowed
the entirety of the steelwork to be erected
at once, removing the requirement of
waiting for the planks to achieve diaphragm
action and so shortened the construction
programme.
Columns were brought to site in
15m-long sections, meaning the structure’s
30m-high frame has one splice just above
third floor. The internal, and heaviest,
columns are 305 UC sections.
According to Elland’s Site Manager
Curtis Lewis, the steel erection programme
progressed from one end of the building
to the other, with each bay built up to the
structure’s full height.
The heaviest steel member was only 6t,
however the large 250t-capacity crawler
crane had to be utilised. With only one
location available for any crane on the site,
and very little room for it to manoeuvre, the
crane had to be able to lift some columns
and beams over the entire frame.
“The capacity and reach was also needed
for the precast plank installation which we
also undertook,” explains Mr Lewis. “We
installed the flooring once the steelwork was
complete and so the planks had to be lifted
up over the frame and then down through
the roof which was left off until the flooring
was complete.”
The UCLan EIC is due to open in 2019.
Education
Visualisation of the
completed building
NSC 25
March 18
Stability comes from
two cores and steel
bracing
A steel solution was
chosen for its flexibility
/Education_buildings#Long_span_beams
/Education_buildings#Attributes_of_steel_construction
/Braced_frames#Horizontal_diaphragms
/Construction
/Fabrication#Handling_and_transportation
/Simple_connections#Column_splices
/Construction#Steel_erection