and developers of new town areas. The practise has
developed an expertise in engineering solutions to a whole
range of technical problems associated with building on
both brown and green field sites.
Residential Developers
Robson Liddle Partnership offers a special service tailored to
the needs of housing developers, particularly national
house builders offering high quality and bespoke luxury
apartments and houses.
Services Include:
Rapid appraisal of site viability prior to purchase;
Appraisal
of foundation requirements; Preparation of standard house
type portfolios/
NHBC type approval;
Design of sub-
structure
and
super-structure,
piled, raft,
standard
foundations and specialist foundations;
Design of low rise
and high rise/
mixed developments;
Design of roads/
sewers and highway structures including bridges; Design
of surface water storage tanks, lakes and lagoons.
Historic Buildings/ Refurbishment/ Expert Witness
Service
From domestic structural survey and loss adjusters work to
the design of
major building refurbishments the practise
has established a range of experience.
Services Include:
Structural
surveys
of
existing
buildings
including
preparation of defect schedules;
Design and repair schemes
for historic/ listed buildings;
Design and detailing of
structural requirements for
major building conversions/
change of use;
Design of underpinning systems and repairs;
Design and repair scheme for pre-fabricated housing e.g.
cornish units,
woolaway houses etc; Expert witness work for
lawyers, loss adjusters or housings developers.
Commercial
The practice is involved in a wide range of buildings for
many branches of industry. These include shopping malls,
nightclubs,
warehousing, laboratories, research
and
development facilities, retail and
mixed development
schemes.
Services Include
Feasibility studies for refurbishment and
new
build;
Feasibility studies for major projects including comparison
of options; Detailed design of steel, concrete, composite
and space structures;
Detailed design of piled, raft or
traditional foundations; Preparation of tender and contract
documents; Service to contractors as part of design and
build team;
Design of roads/ sewers and
major civil
engineering
works; Design of pumping stations, storage
lagoons and balancing ponds.
Geotechnical, Environmental and Urban
Regeneration
The practice employs a full range of staff with experience in
geology,
geotechnics and
ground engineering. This
includes
experts involved
with the regeneration
of
contaminated land and brown field sites.
Services Includes
Desk studies and pre-purchase land appraisa; Trial pitting,
boreholes, rotary coring, dynamic probing etc.;
Mining
assessment;
Gas
monitoring;
Contamination testing/
interpretation;
Appraisal and determination of remediation
for
contaminated
land;
Slope
stability
analysis;
Groundwater
monitoring assessment; Full geotechnical
investigation, testing and interpretative reporting
with
recommendations for the successful development of sites.
Your project
Sandbanks is a prestigious development of 24 luxury
apartments arranged on four storeys with a basement (five
storeys). The Sandbanks is situated on the shoreline of
Poole Harbour,
Dorset (southern England).
It is a very significant and prominent site as it is only one of
a few remaining sites along this stretch of coastline. It is
believed that land prices here are about the fourth most
expensive in the world with London, Tokyo and Manhattan
leading the way.
The development comprises of 3 blocks:
1 West Block
Five storey concrete frame i.e. flat slabs, columns, podium
slab and basement.
2 South Block
As west block but the basement covers only about 35% of
the floor area.
3 East Block
This is a two storey traditional build and has not been
analyzed on ESA-Prima Win.
In both
west and south blocks the third floor is a
lightweight steel frame. The plan size of the south and
west blocks is 51m x 51m arranged in an 'L' shape and has
a total of 5 storeys,
with the basement being 3.0m below
ground level. The total
mass of the two blocks is 7546
Tonnes. The site has a high ground
water table and
therefore positive and negative load cases had to be
considered on the basement slab in both ultimate and
serviceability conditions.
A crack width check was carried
out on the basement walls and slab (crack width 0.15mm)
similar to BS8007 -
Design of Concrete Structures for
Retaining
Aqueous Liquids.
We purchased the non-
linearity module for this project to analyse the basement
slab/ foundations. The slab had a negative (upwards)
pressure and therefore
we
were inducing large tensile
forces into piles when analysed linearly and therefore with
the non linear module these forces were re-distributed to a
point with large downward forces, hence tension piles are
not used and
will reduce the cost of foundations. As a
novice
with ESA-Prima Win and only being
my second
project using this software I have found it to be a long
learning process. But with the assistance of 'CADS'
and the
'help menu' I feel fairly confident to tackle further projects.
I have been particularly impressed with the clarity of the
printed output and the level of information given at the
design stage.
We also have 'links' to 'CADS' design
software modules, the column designer 'link' is excellent
whilst we still experience a few problems with the link to
'CADS' beam designer.
We have also had limited success
using the 'exclusive' option in the variable load cases. The
modules we are already using have greatly improved our
design productivity.
One area that caused difficulty of
input and analysis was the various steps in the floor slabs.
We are now ready to invest in the
module that
would
overcome this problem after we have seen the benefits of
ESA-Prima Win.
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