Vertex was appointed to provide structural and civil engineering services for a Design and Build contractor for this 3-storey, 69-bed care home on a partial brownfield site on the outskirts of Dartmouth.
The building structure comprised a traditional load-bearing masonry construction with precast concrete plank floors with isolated steel support beams and framing for balconies and elevated sun-decks. The multi-pitched tiled roof was supported by timber trussed rafters.
Vertex designed the SUDS drainage system using a combination of gullies, linear channels and soakaways to satisfy planning conditions and the SUDS hierarchy. Car parking and other hard-paved external works design was undertaken to comply with the planning requirements.
Extensive ground investigations were undertaken to determine optimal and cost-effective foundation design and to investigate the soil permeability for design of soakaways for the SUDS drainage system ensuring surface water was retained on site in line with the SUDS hierarchy.
Although the scheme initially adopted a traditional load-bearing masonry with only a few locally required steel beams, significant changes were introduced during the final design development stage. Larger open-plan spaces at ground floor level necessitated an increase in the number of steel beams to support the revised layout.
The building is located on the hilly coastal topography of Dartmouth, an area subject to very high wind pressures, which the design had to accommodate. The inclusion of higher-than-usual (2.3m) glass balustrades on the balconies required particularly careful detailing to resist the high local torsion and sway forces transmitted back to the main structure.
In addition, due to the complex shape of the building, the roof design is highly intricate, requiring close coordination with the contractor to ensure an accurate and safe construction process.
