News
Riverside Quarter – A Pioneering New Approach
7th October 21
Riverside Quarter in Wandsworth is a £250million mixed use development located on the south bank of the River Thames. Delivered in four phases, it comprises six buildings ranging from 11 to 15 storeys, as well as commercial accommodation and leisure spaces.
Galliford Try has been working with Frasers Property to deliver the prestigious project with construction works starting in 2014 and finishing in January 2020. The project has created over 750 new apartments, including 197 affordable homes. The geotechnical challenges of building so close to the Thames required considerable innovation from the engineering teams to prevent landslip during the basement creation process and the inevitable water ingress throughout the six-year building process.
Delivering Certified and Predictable Performance
Innovation was central to this scheme. Pioneering a new systems approach, the final phase of Riverside Quarter was the first development in the UK to specify pre-assembled frames (PAF) – a non-loadbearing infill system custom-manufactured by EOS for the concrete main frame encapsulating light steel framing and external Siniat Weather Defence sheathing.
Current regulations typically deal with individual products and how they perform in laboratory tests. However, EOS believe material providers should have full-scale testing regimes that study the performance of products working together to see how they interact in ‘real’ circumstances, like under fire conditions or when exposed to wind and rain.
In close collaboration with Etex Group partners, Siniat, Promat and FSi, EOS has taken offsite manufacture, prefabrication and preassembly to another level. After a rigorous testing regime PAF systems offer 60-minute fire resistance and a product and performance Etex warranty. This revolutionary next generation system increases the speed of build without compromising on safety, quality, or performance – crucial cost and time benefits make programme savings of up to 30% realistically achievable.
Benefits of a Systems Approach
Eliminating uncertainty, the manufacturer-backed systems approach helps to design out the complexities surrounding individual components and covers a comprehensive list of performance elements. Testing regimes were designed to ensure that PAF give specifiers complete peace of mind knowing that the custom manufactured systems have been subjected to relevant testing for fire, acoustic, weathering, energy efficiency, airtightness, durability and mechanical performance.
Meeting building performance requirements in a unitised solution, the non-loadbearing infill systems were delivered to the Riverside Quarter site as assembled panelised units. The system performance balance was achieved through tested configurations of factory prefabricated light steel frame and Siniat Weather Defence external sheathing together with site applied glass mineral wool insulation at a minimum thickness of 100mm and Siniat internal wall lining.
All components and products were rigorously tested together as a complete system to ensure compatibility, enabling Etex to award the technical performance of the PAF range with a 30-year warranty which was available following a specification and validation process in which system components could not be substituted.
Just in time deliveries reduced the requirement for site storage and the systems approach reduced cutting and reworks onsite. Installation from inside the concrete mainframe enhanced Health and Safety by reducing working externally at height and also offered vast savings for the Riverside Quarter development by reducing mast climber and scaffolding requirements.
The prefabrication of the individual steel elements took place under controlled, highly regulated and safe factory conditions. With so much work completed offsite, the onsite construction schedule for Riverside Quarter was reduced – delivering a faster return on investment for Frasers Property.