Allermuir Health Centre, Edinburgh

Client: City of Edinburgh Council / NHS Lothian
Architect: Gareth Hoskins Architects
Cost: £7.2m

Will Rudd Davidson were commissioned by Hub South East to carry out the Civil and Structural Engineering services for this new build partnership centre. The ultimate Clients are NHS Lothian and the City of Edinburgh Council and the project value is £7.2m.

The projects have been produced on a BIM platform using Revit which has enabled exchange of information with the other Consultants, and in turn has led to a more coordinated design, with defined design efficiencies across the project, ongoing clash detection, and ultimately a smoother Construction Stage.

Our involvement followed our successful completion of a very similar facility in Dunbar, which was completed on budget and programme.

Project Objectives: This Project was packaged up along with 2 others, North West Edinburgh Partnership Centre, and Blackburn Partnership Centre, for the same Client. This was to achieve a consistency of approach in terms of design and also to provide efficiencies in the delivery of all three projects for Hub (South East). The goal was to provide a new state of the art centre, providing integrated community services, of GP and dental practices, and a range of local authority services.

Added Value: We carried out a structural options appraisal, exploring the most effective structural form, based on key parameters of a rational structural grid; column arrangements for efficient floor spans, maintaining flexible open plan column-free spaces; efficient services integration; limiting the overall building height.

A reinforced concrete frame with 2 way spanning flat slabs, and shear walls/ stability cores to the stairwells was selected. We promoted this option with our understanding of the efficient span/ depth ratios of this form of slab and appreciation of the benefits of having no beams within the ceiling services zone, greatly simplifying the service integration.

We have the in-house capabilities to design the RC and steel frames together using the latest integrated 3D structural design software. This added value, as it allowed us to very quickly consider alternative options that could be costed, it produced a highly utilised efficient structure, and gave us valuable data to share with the Contractor for costing and measuring, such as steel tonnage, concrete volumes and reinforcement quantities.

The Architecture of the Allermuir Health Centre had some complex geometry, cantilevers, and the use of precast concrete façade elements, which, whilst architecturally desirable, were unwieldy from a structural and construction perspective. We engaged enthusiastically in the challenges around these issues, as we are always keen to contribute to great Architecture. With our appreciation for buildability, and Health & Safety as well as commercial aspects, we were able to propose alternative concrete systems, and façade treatments providing the architects aesthetic, whilst reducing cranage requirements, structural loadings, and overall complexity.

There were issues at this site with lack of capacity in the public sewer system. We had extensive negotiations with Scottish Water, who stipulated that the Client would be responsible for the cost and delivery of significant off-site drainage upgrades. This was identified as the main project risk. We procured a Drainage Impact Assessment to model the network and understand the shortcomings in the system. We ultimately negotiated, that much of the upgrades could be brought into the site boundary, de-risking the cost/ programme of these works. We designed a system of offline and parallel pipe foul drainage on-site, installed as part of the main groundworks programme.