Tom Murray, Managing Director at Polypipe Building Services (PBS), talks about three projects where early engagement has made a game-changing difference and was the key to reaping the benefits of modern water supply and drainage technologies.
Historically, water management systems have been a bit of an afterthought. Designers and project managers wouldn’t necessarily consider the fundamental impact that careful consideration of drainage and supply systems (or the lack of it) could have on a project. ‘Plumbing’ was left to the sub-contractor. It was assumed that the services would be fitted into the space that they were allocated based on experience.
The benefits of considering water management early in project planning and design can be huge. These are not just small marginal gains, but staggering improvements – in time, space, cost and waste.
Sky Gardens
This is one of several exciting buildings which are re-shaping Leeds and creating new high-value neighbourhoods for the city. Working with Briggs & Forrester Living, PBS provided drainage and water supply systems to the 34-storey tower with 284 residential one, two and threebedroom apartments.
At the outset, PBS took the opportunity to give the customer greater insight into the capability of the Polypipe Advantage Off-site Prefabrication Service with a factory site visit and a tailored presentation on what the potential of a prefabricated approach could be for the project.
Early and close cooperation between Briggs & Forrester and the Polypipe Advantage Design Team enabled the development of bespoke, highly effective and cost-efficient systems.
The drainage risers were prefabricated from Terrain FUZE, an HDPE system which offers a comprehensive range of pipe sizes and fittings together with advanced butt and electrofusion welding, making it ideal for configuring and building bespoke systems offsite. The drainage system developed for Sky Gardens also incorporated Polypipe’s PAPA and Pleura AAV valves, the risers therefore did not require a spacehungry secondary ventilation stack to balance changing pressures. On the water supply side, Sky Gardens uses both of Polypipe’s MecFlow ranges.
MecFlow Fusion provides the risers and manifolds for the boosted cold system, while Mecflow Press provides the runouts and branches to the consumer units within the apartments. The water supply system at Sky Gardens also uses a modular prefabricated plant room assembly, also made from MecFlow Fusion.
The systems installed within Sky Gardens vividly demonstrate the benefits of using a prefabricated approach to MEP. The bespoke Terrain FUZE drainage system enabled risers that would normally take 73 hours to install, to be installed in just nine.
The modular prefabricated plantroom assemblage provides an even more dramatic demonstration of the benefits of prefabrication. The module used at Sky Gardens consists of 13 prefabricated sections and was put together with just 10 electrofusion couplings – a 93.5% reduction in on-site processes. Prefabrication also suited the urban setting of the project. The site’s footprint is extremely tight with little room for storage of components and equipment. The prefabricated system units could be called-up on a floor-by floor basis and craned direct from delivery vehicles to the installation point.
Eastman Village
This ambitious, multi-phased project is built on the old Kodak factory site in Harrow. Working with M&E Contractor, Millharbour on behalf of Barratt London, PBS provided drainage systems for 474 flats, across four towers.
The buildings were carefully designed to incorporate many community amenities, requiring a considered approach to how the M&E elements deliver all the facilities. The drainage system brief was therefore challenging with a very ambitious build schedule. Following an early initial analysis, Millharbour worked closely with PBS to create a bespoke solution.
The Polypipe Advantage Prefabrication Team created a design using Terrain FUZE that combined butt-welds and expansion joints. The complex stack design therefore used a single electrofusion coupling on the ground floor to connect the stacks to the high-level pipework in the basement, after which, each floor-section of stack simply dropped down into the expansion joint below. This approach minimised the amount of on-site jointing work needed, and as the system was robust but lightweight, the available manpower could be used very efficiently.
Trinity Island
This is the latest in a series of residential skyscrapers by the developer Renaker that are transforming the Manchester skyline. The development’s two towers of 1,015 apartments would require a comprehensive water supply system with customised components delivered to a tight build schedule. Contractor MWA Ecosystems was therefore looking for a water supply system that could handle the scale, complexity and ambitious build programme of this project.
There were three major challenges at Trinity Island. Firstly, the highly bespoke systems needed to feed entire towers without taking up valuable space. Secondly, it was an ambitious schedule. Thirdly, costs needed to be controlled. Maintaining consistent water supply pressure in a 600-foot building with 500 apartments, is a challenge – conventionally solved by multiple plantrooms and massive risers. Polypipe’s MecFlow Fusion system uses a fibre reinforced multi-layer PP-RCT pipe specifically designed for plantrooms, risers, headers and runouts. It also has a fire rating of B-s1, d0. This system was robust enough to handle the high pressures required to get boosted cold water to the top of the towers, without the need for secondary pumps.
The boosted cold-water riser and manifolds were prefabricated, which saved time on-site as MWA could fit and test quickly while re-allocating labour to other areas of the MEP install. For this approach to work, it was important that PBS worked closely with MWA at the very start of the project – particularly with the project manager. The advantage technical team was then able to produce detailed drawings of the prefabricated elements so when they got to site everything fitted perfectly. MecFlow’s stable pricing also helped control costs over the course of the project. Being able to deliver according to tight installation windows enabled MWA to fit in with the overall schedule, and maintain their close working relationship with Renaker, a very important customer to the company.
These three projects demonstrate that not only do modern drainage and water supply materials deliver benefits in themselves, but when system design, manufacture and installation methods are carefully considered at the earliest possible point of a project, the advantages can be hugely significant.
