10 NSC
Apr 20
A £23M steel-framed office
complex is under construction
at the Runcorn site of INEOS’s
INOVYN ChlorVinyls business.
The company plans to relocate staff
from a number of existing buildings on its
chemical complex to this new dedicated
four-storey building, which will offer
6,700m2 of floor space.
Designed by Michael Laird Architects, to
a grade A office standard, the building has a
similar steel-framed structure to the INEOS
Grangemouth, headquarters in Stirlingshire,
(see NSC March 2016).
BAM Construction Project Manager
David Oldfield says: “It’s a case of
lessons learnt from the previous job in
Grangemouth.
“We already knew of any specific
challenges we would have to negotiate
including a review of all of the initial
designs, including the steel frame, secondary
steel and cladding, to ensure everything was
value engineered.”
“The client’s brief was to provide a
18m-long large span, column-free, flexible
open-plan office floorplate together with
a full height floor-to-ceiling curtain wall
system to maximise daylight. Steel was the
only suitable material that would allow
the floors to be column-free and provide a
suitable elevation frame for the curtain wall,”
explains Woolgar Hunter Project Director
Kenneth Irvine.
“Along with the column-free floor plan,
steel allows the structural frame to be
erected very quickly in line with the tight
construction programme. A concrete-framed
building would have greatly increased the
critical path and would not achieve the
client’s handover date for the project.”
Steel allows the building to have a
large 7.5m elevation column grid pattern,
which is said to provide an elegant fixing
arrangement for the envelope curtain wall
and cladding system. Internally, there
are no columns, and so the 18m-long
uninterrupted spans extend the full width
and length of the building. To form the
spans, a series of 750mm-deep fabricated
steel plated sections with 500mm diameter
service openings at 750mm centres were
used.
The building’s structural stability is
derived from three steel braced cores; one
central main core with stairs, lift shafts and
toilet facilities and two escape stair cores at
either end of the structure.
“The layouts of the cores allow vertical
flat bar bracing to be hidden in walls
Commercial
Steelwork provides safe design
Owned by INEOS, one of the world’s largest chemical businesses,
INOVYN ChlorVinyls is constructing a new office complex at its site in Runcorn.
FACT FILE
INOVYN ChlorVinyls
offices, Runcorn
Main client:
INEOS UK
Architect:
Michael Laird Architects
Main contractor:
BAM Construction
Structural engineer:
Woolgar Hunter
Steelwork Contractor:
Billington Structures
Steel tonnage: 1,200t
/Multi-storey_office_buildings
/INEOS_Headquarters,_Grangemouth,_Stirlingshire
/INEOS_Headquarters,_Grangemouth,_Stirlingshire
/Facades_and_interfaces
/Facades_and_interfaces#Curtain_walling
/Construction
/Concept_design#Floor_grids
/Steel_construction_products#Plate_girders
/Concept_design#Concrete_or_steel_cores