Following its successful completion of an offsite trial project with Barratt Developments last year, Fusion Building Systems is now working on its first live site with the residential housebuilder.
Work started on site for Fusion at Barratt’s Cane Hill Park development in Coulsdon, Surrey in June. Over the past eight weeks, the designer and manufacturer of light gauge steel superstructures has erected two of the five apartment blocks contracted to them by the UK’s largest housebuilder, which will provide a total of 86 residential units for the private and social housing markets.
Designed and manufactured at Fusion’s facility in Northampton, individual floor and wall panels for the four-storey apartment buildings are being craned into place, assisted on site by a team of just five erectors. External walls arrive at the development pre-insulated using Fusion’s patented system – which is helping to cut build times, reduce the number of trades required on site, and provide a thermal efficiency rating of 0.2W/m2K.
Robert Clark, Head of Business Development at Fusion, said:
“Both companies went on a journey which lasted around 18 months, as we examined in detail how we might be able to work together to make offsite construction a viable option for volume housebuilding. That journey concluded with the successful build of nine properties using our light gauge steel system at one of Barratt’s developments in West Sussex. Now, I’m pleased to say, we’re continuing our supply-chain partnership and have been contracted to deliver projects worth in excess of £3million.”
“Cane Hill Park is one of our first live sites and the five apartment blocks we’ve designed working in collaboration with Barratt, will be fully erected within 24 weeks of our start date. That’s 86 apartments in less than six months. We’ve already reduced our estimated build time on two of the blocks, helping Barratt to keep its build programme on track and move forwards to the completion of the entire site.”
Oliver Novakovic, Technical and Innovation Director, Barratt Developments, added:
“Barratt has spent 18 months assessing a number of offsite systems to support our traditional methods of delivery. We decided to trial with Fusion and are pleased to see this trial progress to a full site test at Cane Hill Park. Cane Hill is one of London’s biggest projects to transform disused public land, and it recently won the Graham Pye award for best family scheme at the Housing Design Awards, so it’s a key development for us.”
The brick-clad apartment buildings contain a mix of one and two-bedroom properties, and while three of blocks will be reserved for affordable housing, the remaining two will be available for private purchase.
Original link - www.hbdonline.co.uk
