Work to rules

Select suppliers take lead on disability

With 20 years in the business, architect Steve Isaacs thought he knew about building hospitals. Then a head-on road collision chopped his feet off. “I was in a wheelchair for a year. It was a real eye-opener.” In the five years since, Isaacs has been in and out of hospital. The experience has left him determined to preach the gospel for disabled access. He wrote the new health building notes for the NHS, is a regular speaker at disability seminars, and advised Build for Health, a consortium that has put together a range of doors whose components meet the latest guidelines on designing for disability. That year in a wheelchair brought home to Isaacs, who’s now on crutches, how many buildings ignore disabled people so profoundly as to make their disability more disabling. Just getting in can be the first obstacle if there’s no ramp or lift. If you do get in, corridors can be too narrow for a wheelchair, and doors too heavy or with handles too high to open. By next October, disabled people will be able to sue for access discrimination in public buildings. And it won’t be just wheelchair users that service providers have to consider: the Disability Discrimination Act, which will underpin the revision of Part M, also defines people with partial sight, deafness, dyslexia and learning difficulties as disabled. “They’ll sue the pants off anyone who doesn’t make their buildings accessible,” claims Julie Batters, a director of Hewi door producer Turnquest and leading light in Build for Health. You may not buy that, but nobody will relish having to replace hundreds of doors because their PFI hospital has failed an accessibility audit. And if an architect has done his research on access and put in appropriate doors, then whoever despecifies the disability-designed handles, say, for a £2.99 alternative could regret it. Build for Health ensures that this won’t happen to you – at least, as far as your doors are concerned. The consortium has targeted the NHS’s Lift (Local Improvement Finance Trust) scheme, which aims to upgrade medical facilities by collectivising individual general practices, dentists, pharmacists and so on into 500-odd new health centres that provide a range of health services. Part of Lift’s spend will go on making facilities accessible to disabled people in smaller, older buildings as well as new health centres. Doors are a key issue in ensuring disabled people can use a building easily (see picture above). But there’s no need to track down doorset components that work with each other because Build for Health has already done that, relieving the burden of specification. The consortium operates in the keenly competitive market of architectural ironmongers and door suppliers, and it took it a year to develop the spec. “PFI demands a lot of work at risk,” explains Isaacs. “You do 90% of the design before getting the job, so speaking to one firm rather than many helps.” Lift schemes are still in the design stage, so no doors have yet appeared on site. But with rivals busily forming partnerships to come up with their own one-stop-shops, the consortium looks like the right idea at the right time. Not every client will appreciate putting in disabled access, although pointing out to retailers that it will help usher in the grey pound could help. “Make them go to the toilet in a wheelchair – that’ll educate them,” says Isaacs. Enquiry number 200

Thermal blanket beats the budget

When Sunderland council told Owen Graham it wanted him to lop half a million off its budget for the new Grangetown school, the construction director knew traditional build would have to go out of the window. In its place, Graham, of Dorin Construction, proposed a timber frame building fitted with an insulating quilt whose thermal performance beats tough standards under Part L and the even tougher standards expected in 2005. Because timber frame is much lighter than the original steel-framed design, Graham could cut down on the groundworks required on the brownfield site, as he didn’t have to dig out and cart away stone to as great a depth. The lighter structure also let him put in a ground-bearing concrete slab rather than the more expensive suspended slab called for by the original design. Graham also used in-house Dorin companies to do the M&E and the roof and replaced the vastly expensive external mahogany cladding on the upper half of the building with a brown-stained redwood to give a similar visual effect. It all helped him to win the budget battle. The biggest trick of all, though, was convincing the client that timber frame was just as good a solution as brick and block. To allay the governors’ concerns, Graham took them to see a timber-framed doctors’ surgery in nearby Chester-le-Street that Dorin had built nine years previously. The doctors were enthusiastic: there had been no shrinkage or defects and the maintenance bill over nine years totalled £300. Graham argued that timber frame was an alternative rather than a compromise, proving it by specifying Timber Frame Solutions’ new Paneltherm system. An insulation quilt made up of 14 alternating layers of foam, wadding and reflective film factory-fitted to the internal face of the 89mm timber stud gives Paneltherm walls and roofs a U-value of 0.18, compared with the original design’s 0.35 (the current minimum). Paneltherm doesn’t match the U-value achieved by Tradis timber frame panels filled with recycled newspaper pellet insulation, but it is much cheaper. It is possible to get an even lower heat loss rating by stuffing mineral wool insulation within the timber frame panels, which gives the system a U-value of 0.15 (the minimum recently proposed by the government for the next revision of Part L). Graham reports few interfacing problems at Grangetown, the first site for Paneltherm. “We did have to make some minor changes,” he says. “Modifying timber on site is easy.” So easy, in fact, that Graham handed over the new school weeks ahead of schedule. No surprise then that Grangetown has become a Movement for Innovation project. Enquiry number 201

Win the ultimate seal of approval

Each revision of the Building Regulations tightens the screw on construction. But while Part L’s air-tightness requirement gives construction managers one more headache – to ensure all junctions in the structure have the tightest of seals – it also lets them hand over a building that will save the client money. “Air that escapes from our stores is hot air that we’ve paid to heat,” says B&Q quantity surveyor Jeff Tearall. As far as he’s concerned, Part L’s air-tightness requirement is no tiresome new rule, but a measure that will pay off by reducing the company’s power and plant costs. Public structures with over 1000m2 of floorspace now have to pass an airtightness test. Before building control will OK the building, you have to prove that large amounts of heat won’t leak out through the walls and roof. The new standard is not a particularly exacting one – for every square metre of floorspace, the air leakage rate can be up to 10m3 per hour – but it’s the first time the Regs have insisted on sealing up buildings. Exceeding the standard
With B&Q building and operating its new stores itself, Tearall isn’t interested in just meeting the minimum. Operating costs are as significant as construction costs for superstores, and reducing the amount of heat required saves money. Moreover, by building a store to achieve a specific level of airtightness, B&Q can size the cooling and heating plant accordingly. There’s no need to overspecify plant to guarantee it will be able to cope. Tearall decided to use the construction of a store in Doncaster completed last June as an airtightness testbed. Pressure-testing another store uncovered where exactly the biggest leak was: the junction between the 2.4m-high brickwork and the metal cladding above it. So Tearall sat the cladder down with airtightness tester BSRIA to develop a tighter interface. Most air (and heat) escapes a building at its interfaces, according to David Pickavance, head of testing services at BSRIA. “The long details are where you get your big fixes,” he says. “A 1mm gap around a building with a 500m perimeter adds up to a hole half a square metre in size.” Lesser culprits, which can nevertheless combine to wreck an air tightness score, include failure to seal supporting steelwork at floor and roof level, and services pushed through blockwork walls but not sealed to the cavity. The Doncaster store scored 8 in its air pressure test, which is a pass, but nothing special. Buildings have to score 10 or lower, but the best achieve two to three. Pickavance says 10 isn’t difficult to hit, although BSRIA did record a 75 a few years ago and regularly turns up 16s. “I’ve walked around a 16 and you could see through the walls,” he says. Tearall says he wants to move towards airtightness step by step rather than by throwing money at it. He says that continuing the work on better detailing will get B&Q’s cladding system closer to the two it is theoretically capable of. Enquiry number 202

Can you breathe easy on asbestos?

The death toll from asbestos-related diseases, already Britain’s biggest workplace killer with 3,000 victims a year, will treble over the next seven years, with construction uniquely vulnerable. Between 1980 and 2000, 123 construction managers died from mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining caused by inhaling asbestos fibres. Only in construction does asbestos pose a present danger as well as a past peril. Workers in other industries don’t come into contact with asbestos any more, but the total ban on its use makes no difference to its presence in the built environment. If you’re working on a building put up between the 1950s and 1980s, there’s a good chance it will contain asbestos that refurb may disturb. Demolition certainly will. Which is why, by 21 May next year, all public buildings must have an asbestos register that construction companies can consult before carrying out work. Each register will list the location and condition of all asbestos in a building, and an accompanying management plan will detail whether it can be safely left in place or needs to be encased or removed, and how that will be achieved. Fine in theory, but contractors will need to be on their guard. For a start you need to insist the client actually provides the asbestos register before proceeding. David Sibbitt, asbestos manager for consulting engineer Cameron Durley, recommends insisting on a type 3 survey, one where the surveyor has physically checked concealed areas rather than just eyeballed the structure. Plastering warning notices around a building won’t manage the risk. Sibbitt claims there is only one training course (the British Occupational Hygiene Society’s P405) that equips those who draw up the plans with what they need to know about managing asbestos. The HSE does not insist on formal training. Best laid plans?
Whatever you do, don’t let a client get away with making you decide. Sibbit points out that the average contractor doesn’t know enough about how to deal with asbestos. While the client is the one responsible for getting a competent asbestos removal contractor, an HSE licence is not in itself a guarantee of competence. The things to look for are valid insurance, no outstanding HSE prohibitions or prosecutions, and checking that the method statement doesn’t include obsolete practices like cropping the bolts off asbestos sheets and carting them away. Registers and plans are specifically designed to safeguard construction workers. But whether contractors are aware of their new rights is another matter. “Asbestos is a grief purchase,” laments Sibbitt. “Most people don’t want to know.” Do not disturb
Strong, fireproof, waterproof, insulative and cheap, asbestos was widely used in post-war construction. It was banned in 1985, although asbestos-containing materials such as asbestos cement remained in use until a total ban in 1999. Asbestos only presents a health risk when the material deteriorates or is disturbed and the long asbestos fibres are shaken loose. Inhaled fibres lodge in the chest, cannot be removed and result in incurable cancers. Typically, the cancers don’t manifest themselves for at least 15 years after exposure. Some asbestos products are more dangerous to remove than others. Low-risk asbestos-containing products include floor tiles, cement roofing and wall cladding. Removal involves wetting them down, stripping and bagging them. High-risk asbestos-containing products include lagging around pipes and boilers, insulation boards, sprayed asbestos and loose asbestos packing in ceiling voids, ducts and structural steel joists. Safe removal involves covering the product with a negative pressure tent and sucking air out through a filter, and continual wetting.

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