Faced with a quickly rising order intake, specialist personal health care product provider Salts Healthcare, who have been trading since 1701, feared that growth might be stifled before they had chance to expand.
Fortunately, they discovered Smart Space who were able to provide an innovative permanent building system to answer their needs in a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional build.
Smart Space have provided a new 3,500 square foot single bay extension to Salts’ existing factory to create an additional production area. Operations manager, Lee Tretheway observed, “The new production capacity in the Smart Space building has allowed me to introduce new equipment and processes and to revise production layout to achieve greater efficiency. In reality this has liberated about 1,500 square feet of space in the main factory so the beneficial impact of the new accommodation has been much greater than expected.”
At a cost, excluding foundations and fitting-out, of £80,000 or £250 per square metre, the new building price tag is a fraction of that of conventional construction. Cladding has been selected to match the existing building giving a harmonious and professional finish. More importantly to Salts Healthcare, construction time on site after completion of the slab was minimal, with the Smart Space team taking less than two weeks to erect the building, the extension was complete in just one month. This was a major benefit as there was little disruption to business.
The Salts Healthcare extension has a design life of 35 years. The completed building compares well in performance to traditional construction, complying fully with the latest Building Regulations. However, by using less material and being lighter, means foundation requirements were less complex. This contributed to time saving and also means that the embedded energy and carbon footprint of the final build, both above and below ground, is far less than that of a typical building.
The Smart Space light-weight permanent building system is based on optimising the use of materials to enclose space more efficiently. Key to this is the use of a high strength light weight structural frame of cold rolled steel sections rather than conventional hot rolled and fabricated steel girders and joists. The frame is clad in insulated composite sheeting to give weather tightness, insulation and provide additional bracing to the structure.
Lee concluded, “Smart Space did what they said from the first call. Throughout the project they delivered each phase professionally and on time. That’s so refreshing.” Commenting for Smart Space, managing director Antony Hunt noted, “Salts Healthcare was a good client to work with. For a business to last for 300 years it has to be open to new ideas and innovation and I think that they appreciated that our more radical approach to construction would solve several potential problems and help them continue to grow.”
Smart Space provides a complete range of bespoke buildings suitable for temporary, interim or permanent accommodation for industrial, commercial, leisure, retail and educational uses.
