Doran Consulting was commissioned to provide civil and structural engineering services by Felix O’Hare Ltd in a design and build contract to replace the ageing Armagh Campus of the Southern Regional College with a state-of-the-art new building. This new facility provides a significant increase in accommodation on the existing Lonsdale Road campus site.
Site preparation involved the demolition of the existing buildings and diversion of a major culvert to make way for the new building. An 8m high contiguous piled retaining wall was required at the rear of the proposed building to create the necessary change in levels between the building and the car park behind.
The ground conditions were extremely challenging with stiff clay to the rear of the site and soft material at the front, along the line of a historic watercourse. A mixture of foundation types were used for the building, with piled foundations in the softer ground at the front of the site and spread foundations at the rear. A detailed settlement analysis was carried out to ensure that differential movement between the two foundation types would be within acceptable limits.
Works were designed and planned to avoid disruption to neighbouring properties, which included the Grade A listed Court House, a primary school and a number of residential properties.
The building superstructure is a braced steel frame with composite metal deck flooring for maximum efficiency and speed of construction. The integration of building services placed demanding limits on floor beam depths, which favoured this method of construction over precast concrete floors. Acoustic requirements were satisfied by the use of a screed on an acoustic membrane.
The video below is courtesy of Felix O’Hare & Co. Ltd.
