North Wall Cladding

Following an inspection of the building, it was documented that large areas of the north elevation were suffering from severe degredation, with the fixings that support the external claddings to the secondary steelwork having been completely corroded. The concern was that further degredation would result in the cladding detaching and falling to the ground below.

The project required us to remove the existing steelwork and cladding, and replace with new single skin cladding system that would be water, wind and weatherproof. Kalzip roof and cladding interface also needed to be flashed over the building to ensure no water ingress entered the building.

As the building was 60 metres tall, this project came with risks of working from height. These risks were acknowleged and mitigated by using a designed scaffold, erected by Kaefer and approved by the client, and cable hoists were used to raise and lower the cladding sheets. Our roofing team were consistently working alongside our in-house riggers.

KEY CHALLENGES:

This area of Sellafield was a known asbestos area, and we had to work collaboratively with Kaefer to see if there was any asbestos in the areas we were working in. The scaffolding needed to be sheeted in, and we worked alongside Kaefer to determine asbestos presence, eventually clearing up the area before we commenced works.

Limited amounts of scaffold ties could be left in the wall through the new cladding, so the cladding was being inspected and approved in bays, so the scaffolding could be dropped periodically.