Easton Gymnastics Club
Deer Park House, Easton, Norfolk
Technicus Consulting was appointed Easton Gymnastics Club for provision of structural design and consultancy services for a new gymnasium building to replace their deteriorated and aged existing facility.
The new building comprises a 38m x 25m wide steel portal frame, with lightweight cladding and roof sheeting. The duo-pitched roof structure comprises two sections zones, one being raised to provide more headroom over the proposed trampoline area of the gymnasium.
The building superstructure was designed with a roof imposed and service loading allowance to help future-proof the building with regard to installation of various items of suspended gymnasium equipment. At the time of construction the proposed equipment to be installed included several sets of suspended rings, rope hanging rigging, trampoline spotting rigs, swing out rings, wall bars and a climbing wall with inverted climbing face.
The building substructure comprises mass concrete pad foundations supporting the steel portal frame columns. An insitu reinforced concrete ground floor construction was specified incorporating various pits to accommodate trampolines and foam filled landing zones. The foundation and ground floor support arrangement was designed and specified to accommodate variations in the depth of made ground within the building footprint.
As Easton Gymnastics Club is a privately funded club, this project was undertaken on a shoe-string budget. Technicus Consulting was pleased to work closely with the Gymnastics Club and Principal Contractor during all stages of the project to explore and exploit value engineering options as fully as possible, in order to minimise construction costs.