Case Studies: Residential Sector

Case studies and examples of our structural engineering services in the residential sector

Light Gauge Steel - Charlotte Road, EC2

Client: Billingford Construction

Architect: MBGa

Engineer: AMP Consultants

Status: Complete

The project is a two storey penthouse extension to an existing three storey building. The frame erection took two weeks, and required road closures in central London.

The apartment is a rented property, commanding £1000/week, and as such is finished to a very high standard.

The hot rolled frames were clad with light gauge steel infill framing, and the floor was constructed using two hundred millimetre deep lattice trusses from seventy five millimetre profile sections.

As the new floors are founded on an existing building the 'foundation' loads were kept to an absolute minimum by using the lightest possible hot rolled sections and light gauge steel infill walls (as opposed to block work), whilst still keeping the required 'quality feel' by ensuring that the stiffness of the finished frame was comparable to traditionally built structures.

As can be seen from the image to the right, Charlotte Road is a typically narrow London street. This combined with the new structure being erected three storeys up would have made for an extremely challenging project for traditional build techniques.

The same applied for the number of deliveries of raw materials. The frames and floor trusses were assembled offsite in the factory environment which ensured quality, reduced risk from working at height, and reduced the local environment impact.

It was even possible for AMP's Engineers to design a small outside space, with roof top views of the surrounding city scape.

Hot rolled steel was used for the portalised frames at five metre centres along the length of the building, and to frame out the sliding patio doors, but the rest of the structure was light gauge steel.

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