Bankside Yards is a stunning 1.4 million sq ft residential, office and retail development on London’s South Bank. A ‘connected destination’, the 5.3-acre site is close to a number of London’s cultural centrepieces including the art gallery Tate Modern. Bankside Yards will create eight new buildings comprising offices, retail shops and leisure facilities, along with residential apartments, creating a new standard of work, living and play on London’s south side.

Ambar Kelly was engaged to manufacture and detail its RiserSafe® units on all riser openings throughout the steel frame build. Doing so will keep safety a high priority, reducing the risk of falls from height during construction.

Ambar Kelly supplied 550 RiserSafe® units over 18 floors of Building 3 within the development. 3D modelling was utilised to detail and coordinate the units according to TClarke’s M&E services penetrations, Hall & Kay’s electrical requirements, Price Building Services’ pipework and Imperial Ductwork’s services. Weekly coordination meetings with all the disciplines and Multiplex’s MEP team were undertaken to ensure any issues were detailed out before reaching construction phase.

Structural engineers AKT II designed the frame, which featured PFCs throughout. This type of design gave a flush clean finish at the structural slab level and allowed for services to pass overhead through the steels. However, this design did not take into consideration the fire protection. Therefore, the size of the riser opening had to be reduced due to the area that needed to be allowed for the PFCs to be either encased by the fire board/and or the intumescent paint, which swells up under heat to protect the steel by 50 times the paint thickness.

Ambar Kelly was able to use its expertise to find a solution. Ambar Kelly’s units were made with angles welded to the side of them to hang from the PFC steel. This design meant they sat flush with the structural slab level and weren’t traditionally cast in.

Ambar Kelly was first put into contact with Multiplex in July 2020. Yet, a commercial decision was made at the time that meant Ambar Kelly was not a financially viable option. There was a turn of fate however, as in December 2020 Multiplex contacted Ambar Kelly, as RiserSafe® was considerably more cost effective when taking into account that incorporating GRP would require installing secondary steels as the fixing points for the M&E modular frames. Fire protection had also not been considered and they would not have been able to fire board the PFCs as per the BG detail using an alternative riser protection.

Creating a new benchmark for mixed-use developments in the capital, Bankside Yards is a striking addition to London’s South Bank. The presence of Ambar Kelly’s RiserSafe® units will assure safety during construction.

For more information on RiserSafe® and to arrange a meeting with our industry experts visit Ambar Kelly or call 01707-324523