BAS Frames delivered a 7-storey steel frame full build providing 54 flats for Croydon Council on Russell Hill Road, Purley — taking over a scheme after another contractor had left the ground floor with defects, and completing it through the COVID-19 pandemic in 18 weeks.
The scheme replaced 7 detached houses near Purley Station with a single 7-storey building. BAS Frames worked for Selsdon Building Contractor in partnership with Steel Frame Solutions, delivering the full build system, flooring, boarding, breather membrane and brick tie channels.
Inheriting a defective ground floor
BAS Frames came onto the project after the ground floor was already built by a different contractor — one who had not been able to manage a scheme of this size. The work they left behind carried a number of problems.
On a steel frame building, the ground floor is not simply the first storey. It is the datum every level above is set out from. A frame is dimensionally accurate by nature, which is exactly why it is unforgiving of an inaccurate base: errors do not absorb themselves as they might in masonry; they accumulate and appear at level 7.
Our team had to rectify the inherited work before a single panel of the new structure could be set out. That is unglamorous, and it does not appear in any programme — but skipping it would have compromised all 54 flats.
Convincing a contract manager who had doubts
Selsdon’s contract manager was, by his own account, sceptical about steel frame systems at the outset. Many main contractors are, and the reasons are usually reasonable: unfamiliarity with the sequence, uncertainty about how the trades behind it are affected, and a suspicion that a light structure means a compromised one.
We addressed it by working alongside their site agents rather than around them, giving hands-on guidance to a team who had not run an SFS package before. Vertical lifting was handled by crane, which pulled delivery times down and protected the programme. By completion, the same contract manager was asking about the next project.
Building through the pandemic
COVID-19 arrived mid-programme. Method statements and risk assessments had to be rewritten, and working practices reorganised around distancing on a live 7-storey site.
Light steel construction had an advantage here that was not obvious before 2020: it is a dry trade with fewer operatives on the deck at any one time than a wet build requires, and its sequencing tolerates spacing between teams. It did not make the pandemic easy. It did make it manageable.
Outcome
54 flats delivered for Croydon Council in 2021, on a 7-storey frame set out from a ground floor we had to correct first. Selsdon Building Contractor’s contract manager — the same one who started sceptical about SFS — approached us about working together again.
Project facts
- Client: Selsdon Building Contractor
- End client: Croydon Council
- Location: Russell Hill Road, Purley, London CR8 2LF
- Scope: 7-storey SFS full build, flooring, boarding, breather membrane, brick tie channels
- Units: 54 flats, replacing 7 detached houses
- Partner: Steel Frame Solutions
- Year: 2021
- Duration: 18 weeks
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