Trent Concrete provides brick-faced precast to Portman House
Trent Concrete provided a combination of brick-faced precast concrete and reconstructed stone for the recently completed headquarters building of the Portman Building Society in Bournemouth, known as Portman House. Brick-faced precast is proving increasingly popular, since concrete panels can provide quality, speed and durability whilst the brick facing gives a traditional appearance.
Trent's £836,000 contract covered the design, manufacture and erection of 36 precast column casings in a reconstructed stone to replicate the tonal quality of adjacent Jura stone cladding, and 1200 square metres of brick-faced spandrels with feature
reconstructed stone mullions. The precast brickwork uses Lingfield Orange Brick, a top quality, durable brick which is suitable for the coastal environment in Bournemouth.
The standard of workmanship is very high, reflecting the quality achieved in factory conditions. For this building, a stack-bond pattern was specified - Trent achieves this by placing each brick in a pre-set grid at the bottom of the mould - and the joints are hand-pointed in the factory.
As well as serving an aesthetic purpose, the spandrels are structural and carry the reconstructed fin mullions. This ability to span removes the need for falsework as they can be delivered and erected as a complete unit. Other advantages of brick-faced precast are: speed of erection; certainty of programme time since production is unaffected by weather or labour availability; maintaining a clean and tidy site by reducing the need for "wet" trades on site; and providing high quality brickwork in these days of on-site labour shortages.
Portman Building Society is the UK's fifth largest building society.
Client: Portman Building Society
Architect: Fitzroy Robinson
Contractor: Skanska UK
Engineer: Ove Arup & Partners
Notes
Trent Concrete is a specialist precast concrete contractor, producing high quality bespoke architectural cladding and structures. Providing a complete solution from detailed design development through skills-based manufacture to on-site erection using its own teams, Trent Concrete partners with leading developers and specifiers to ensure that their projects gain maximum benefit from prefabrication.
Trent Concrete's precast solutions make a major contribution to improved quality, certainty, sustainability, safety and efficiency in the UK construction industry today.
The company has worked on some of the most prestigious projects of recent years, including The Scottish Office and the Toyota GB Plc and Thames Water headquarters buildings, and the quality of its work is consistently recognised in the form of industry awards. Trent Concrete was founded in 1917 and employs more than 200 people.
Editorial contact: David Walker
Tel: 0115 987 9747
Email: lmason@trentconcrete.co.uk
Trent Concrete Limited - e-mail: quality@trentconcrete.co.uk