A consortium called Salford Village Limited was established to deliver the design, build and future management of the accommodation. The main contractor, Graham Construction, appointed Siniat as it’s key drylining and external sheathing board supplier.
The design brief was to create a distinctive new part of the city, with the target of achieving an ‘excellent’ BREEAM rating, setting high standards for sustainability and energy efficiency. Nine residential blocks were to be built in a very challenging timescale.
The design challenges
- Create a safe and welcoming campus environment that is accessible to all
- Adhere to tight planning regulations which promoted a brick facade
- Achieve BREEAM ‘excellent’ performance rating in energy efficiency
- Specify materials that would result in low on-going property maintenance costs
- Exceed building regulations’ acoustic performance requirements between student bedrooms.
The construction challenges
- Building nine students blocks over two different sites was a complex challenge
- The build needed to be completed within very tight time constraints
- To ensure the building was made watertight as quickly as possible to allow internal trades to carry out their work
- Keep waste to a minimum
- To ensure each building was certified and compliant
The two biggest installation challenges was the very tight timescale and meeting the BREEAM ‘excellent’ rating. Working in partnership with our technical team from the early planning stage, Graham Construction chose 26,700m2 of Weather Defence to satisfy multiple requirements.
Weather Defence is an revolutionary external sheathing board which has transformed the construction of the building envelope. It has many benefits over cement particle boards, in particular it is 50% quicker to install and it offers a BREEAM 'Very Good' rating.
Brian Smith, Manager, Graham Construction
"If we'd gone down a traditional brick build, it would have taken two years to get the building watertight. As Weather Defence is water proof and weather resistant, we could leave it exposed on frame for three months. This meant we could get on with the internals sooner than if we'd followed a more traditional approach."
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