BAS Frames delivered the SFS infill package to a 14-storey mixed-use tower and a 4-storey office building on Elmfield Way in west London, working with zero on-site storage and a just-in-time delivery regime, for HG Construction in 2018 over 12 weeks.
The scheme combined residential and commercial space in a 14-storey tower alongside a separate 4-storey office building, close to Paddington Station. Our package covered SFS infill including boarding, vent formation and brick tie channels.
No storage area at all
The site sits on a high street. There was no compound, no laydown area, nowhere to hold a week’s materials. On most projects, the buffer of stored material is what absorbs a late delivery or a change in sequence. Here there was none.
Everything ran just-in-time. Each load was pre-booked against a crane slot and distributed straight to canteen decks installed on each floor level, so material moved from lorry to working level without ever resting at ground.
That regime works only if the design is settled far enough ahead to order accurately, and if the installation sequence is planned floor by floor before anything is called off. Get the order wrong and there is no store to fall back on — the crane slot passes and the following day’s work is gone.
Fire safety after Grenfell
The building carried stringent fire safety requirements, and fire mastic was used extensively throughout the structure — at every service penetration, junction and cavity closure where a fire could otherwise find a path.
The project ran in the period after the Grenfell Tower fire, and that was present in how the team worked. Fire stopping on a residential tower is not a line item to be closed out at the end of a programme. It is installed once, concealed permanently, and relied on by people asleep in the building for the rest of its life.
Two buildings, one package
Running the 14-storey tower and the 4-storey office building together meant two structures with different floor-to-floor heights, different façade build-ups and different access constraints, sharing a single crane and a single delivery schedule.
The infill approach suited that. Because SFS panels are installed floor by floor between the primary frame’s slabs, work on the two buildings could be interleaved around crane availability rather than each waiting for the other.
Project facts
- Client: HG Construction
- Location: Hathaway House, 87-99 Elmfield Way, London W9 2BA
- Scope: SFS infill package, boarding, vent formation, brick tie channels
- Buildings: 14-storey mixed-use tower and 4-storey office building
- Year: 2018
- Duration: 12 weeks
- Constraint: No on-site storage, just-in-time deliveries to canteen decks
Building on a constrained high-street site? See our SFS infill walling system, read about SFS fire resistance ratings, or send us your drawings.
