This five-storey London townhouse was undergoing major refurbishment. The homeowner had originally appointed a design & build contractor to handle everything from structure to finishes, but once works began, the limitations of that approach became clear.
When chimney flues were discovered running through the party walls, the contractor’s engineer revised the structural design: adding £70,000 of steel to solve the issue. Concerned by the scale (and cost) of the changes, the homeowner asked Re-Structured to take a second look.
We reviewed the structural design and quickly identified over-specification across both the steelwork and concrete. More importantly, the design hadn’t adequately accounted for the lateral stability of the existing structure.
We recommended additional investigative work — including a flue survey — to understand where new steel could bear into the party walls more efficiently. With this insight, we were able to redesign the structure and reduce material use significantly.
Around this time, the homeowner also brought in MacLean Architecture + Design, replacing the design & build contractor with a more collaborative team.
Terrace houses are narrow, so structural bulk doesn’t just cost money, it costs usable space. Our revised scheme gave the homeowner both back.
And because some steel had already been ordered, we didn’t just scrap it. We reworked the scheme to integrate it wherever possible: saving both carbon and cost.
"Undertaking a site visit when starting a project is a really important factor in designing structure as it allows you to gather information and learn the intricacies of a property, this often allows you to make more informed decisions. In this case the important thing for us was having an appreciation of what we were working with.
Kildare also highlighted that, if anything, sometimes through more expensive upfront exploratory works being undertaken, you can end up saving a lot more money in the long run, to get the full assessment of the structure."
– Michael Carr, Structural Engineer
When you have a design ready for review, we can assess this to see what savings we can make. This can be at any stage before the steelwork is ordered.
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