One Centenary Way is the first building within Phase 2 of the major regeneration project within the Paradise area of Birmingham. Appointed by Sir Robert McAlpine, BHC had supplied, fabricated and installed over 34,000m2 of metal decking to form the 13-storey mixed-use building.
The 280,000ft2 project is one of the more elaborate buildings within the Paradise area due to its location over the A38 Queensway tunnel that remined in operation during construction. BHC fabricated and erected 6,286 tonnes of steelwork and provided concrete topping to the metal decking on all floors.
Sixteen trusses, totalling 1,156 tonnes, are amongst the largest ever designed and constructed in the UK for a commercial building. The enormous trusses form the foundation and podium level, which will act as a bridge over the A38 tunnel, for the rest of the building to be constructed upon. The trusses required spherical bearings to one end, allowing movement of the podium bridge structure.
A 1,200– mobile crane with a full reach of 89 metres was used to lift the transfer trusses, the largest of which was 34.6 metres in length and 5.2 metres wide. The heaviest truss weights in at 119 tonnes. The podium bridge structure was erected over a two week period and in engineering the trusses as fully welded assemblies saved several months on site.
One of the main features of the upper structure was the jet-black exoskeleton braced frame that acted as the main stability for the building. These movement connections were achieved over the depth of the sections and required multiple design iterations to satisfy the rotational stiffness that the engineer required.
The design changes BHC proposed and that were implemented by the consultants and reduced the embodied carbon by 4,602 tCO2e. Further to this, as a result of BHC’s onsite renewables we were able to reduce the overall fabrication CO2e by 571 tonnes.
