Idom Merebrook, the UK brand of Idom Group, a leading international engineering consultancy with a base in Cardiff, will complete its first year onsite this spring at Swansea University.
The high profile refurbishment programme is well underway and encompasses two of the University’s most renowned buildings. The work is part of a £72m development programme on the University’s Singleton Campus, designed to create world-class facilities for student learning and living, and to establish a centre for scientific research excellence.
Idom was appointed by Kier Construction under their SCAPE framework to provide structural design services for the refurbishment, temporary works and new facilities for the Taliesin Arts Centre and the Talbot Building.
The Taliesin Arts Centre is a popular entertainment venue for both students and the local community. First built in 1984, the venue puts on over 50 live shows a year, houses a popular cinema and a museum of Egyptian antiquities. The Taliesin will soon be home to a new £2m Student Learning and Creativity centre, due to be completed on the ground floor level next year. Idom’s scope of work on the venue has focused on refurbishment of the old building and includes partitioning, temporary works and structural amendments.
Idom has also been engaged to facilitate the remediation and refurbishment of the engineering faculty at the Talbot Building. This will house the TATA Steel Innovation Centre, a testing facility and centre for engineering. Once complete, the building will provide a hub for collaborative projects between TATA, the University and local government.
Idom Merebrook Managing Director, Ramon Ramirez commented: “The new development on Swansea’s Singleton Campus is a very exciting project to be involved in. Innovation and great design are at the heart of this entire project and our team has responded to a highly innovative brief, which engages well with the specialist skills within our business.
Idom has been involved in the design of many entertainments venues and university campuses, so is well placed to help create a new facility of which the University will be proud.”
As part of its scope of work, Idom Merebrook has undertaken a structural assessment to design and modify the building fabric and incorporate the new structures. The work is designed around the construction of a new steel fatigue testing facility which requires special design consideration to deal with onerous vibration loading — a potential cause of fatigue failure in buildings.
The team has also designed the plinths to house the testing machines, the steel gantry to enable the loading of test samples and has undertaken the radar scanning of concrete slabs to provide information on construction and carried out performance capacity analysis.
