Construction World December 2015

B

Specialist Contractors or Suppliers

Photos by Oliver Karstel

Hatfield Studios

52

With the University of Pretoria contin- uing to grow and more and more students coming from outside Pretoria, student accommodation is very scarce. Ellinas Developers saw an opportunity here and successfully leased the planned ‘Hatfield Studios’ to the Univer- sity and a very ambitious build commenced in November 2013, occupation date December 2014.

Generally a building will have two to three shafts for access, one for lift access, and one or two for stair/emergency exit. Hatfield Studios which consisted of a large parking basement and two towers of rooms, had a grand total of 12 shafts. Inaddition to this, the east andwestwalls of the basement and towers were off-shutter concrete feature walls. The progress of a shaft or feature wall always determines the progress of the whole project. Cranage was always going to be a critical resource and with the construc- tion site having a relatively small footprint, the main contractor decided on only two tower cranes. With each shaft and feature wall requiring at least four hours of crane time, 56 crane hours would be consumed every two weeks on the shafts and feature walls alone to meet the ambitious programme. Also, the towers were designed with structural internal walls requiring crane lifting of gang-formed shutters there too. The advantage of this design is that the floors are very modular which is perfect for custom made table formwork. The initial plan from the formwork

supplier was to utilise 16 m 2 tables and crane them into position, one by one. It soon became apparent that there would not be sufficient surplus crane capacity to move flooring formwork. The tables were replaced with the light man-handable Skydeck 1,125 m 2 panel which could be carried from floor to floor. The heaviest part of the Skydeck system, the 2,25 m long main beam, weighs just 15,5 kg. Eight hour days quickly turned into 16 hour days with self-compacting concrete being poured late into the night. Although it was a very ambitious programme, accuracy was paramount as the main contractor had opted for a pre-manufactured modular bath- room requiring tolerances of millimeters to fit into the rooms. Errors did occur and critical remedial work had to take place including breaking down an interior wall, propping the floors and then recasting the walls from the bottom of the shutters with self levelling concrete and a special pump/shutter adaptor. Labour took strain with the long hours, there was a month-long steel strike during winter, but the University took reasonable occupation in the middle of December 2014.

Project information • Name of company entering: PERI Formwork & Scaffolding Engineering

• Project start date: 8 July 2013 • Project end date: December 2014 • Client: Feenstra Group • Project team: Feenstra Group • Main contractor: Basil Read • Architect: Boogertman + Partners • Project manager: Feenstra Group • Quantity surveyor: DelQS • Consulting engineer: DG Consulting Engineers

2 15 BEST PR O JECTS

CONSTRUCTION WORLD DECEMBER 2015