22nd Jun 2009
SGB easy access for major King’s Cross refurbishment
SGB has erected a custom-designed scaffolding and temporary roof structure on
some of the best examples of Victorian railway architecture in Europe. Supplied
to BAM Construction, the equipment is assisting in the £136 million refurbishment
of historic railway buildings around London King’s Cross. SGB’s contract with
BAM involves the contractor refurbishing the Eastern Goods Yard, including the
Grade II listed Transit Sheds and Granary Building. It forms phase one of ambitious
£2billion regeneration scheme in the area, which will see the 27 ha site being
transformed into a new community providing homes, offices, shops and amenity areas.
BAM approached SGB at an early stage of the design process, in order to develop
an efficient and sensitive method of providing access for contractors working
on the Granary Building and Transit Sheds. Rising to 10 levels in places, the
scaffolding requirements were extensive and needed to be robust. However, in order
to avoid unnecessary damage to the listed structures, SGB had to find a way of
tying the scaffold into the building without drilling into the brickwork.
“As we couldn’t drill through the walls, we used the window openings to help us tie the scaffolding to the building” comments Bob Morris, Contracts Manager at SGB. Since the restoration would involve removal and replacement of all the windows, SGB saw the potential of exploiting these temporary openings. “Basically, we’ve put a tie through the window and held it in place with a beam across the back” explains Mr Morris.
SGB has supplied its popular CUPLOK® system scaffold, with wide, eight-board, decks to provide ample space for the
contractor’s operatives. The absence of diagonal bracing ensured there are no
obstacles to hamper the restoration work.
To ensure stability of the scaffold on the Transit Sheds, SGB suspended a series
of one-tonne ballast bags from node points on the CUPLOK® scaffold, removing the need to rely on mechanical fixings to the building. The
bags also served as an environmentally efficient way of storing the crushed masonry
that the refurbishment works created. Instead of increasing site traffic by removing
the material, it will be re-used as aggregate on another part of the site once
its use as scaffold weights is complete.
BAM is also replacing the Granary Building’s original dual-pitch roof. Here,
SGB has erected its COVERSPAN® temporary roof system to provide a sheltered environment for the contractor.
Again, it was vital that the temporary roof did not interfere with the original
structure and so the COVERSPAN® frame is attached directly to the CUPLOK® scaffolding. “The roof was designed at tender stage and SGB only had to modify
it slightly for this project” explains BAM’s Construction Manager David Stephenson.
