As a part of Tower Hamlets biggest ever spend on school improvements, the local council has partnered with the construction company Bouygues UK, to deliver £230m of refurbishment as a part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme across their borough.
Base Structures were given the opportunity to tender for this project following previous successful collaborations with the Director of one of the senior companies already involved. The early brief from the project engineers identified that the canopy could not impose additional loads onto the surrounding parts of the building and so the entire structure is supported solely by the four corner columns which are bolted directly on top of the existing building’s structural steel skeleton.
For this reason and due to the position of the canopy towards the top of the building, extensive lightning protection had to be added across all of the joints in the steel framework so that in the event of a strike, the massive electrical charge would pass through the building and be harmlessly dispatched through existing steel structure to earth.