Thousands of metres of Boise Cascade’s I-joists and laminated beams were used by Howarth Timber Engineering in the off-site construction of a new primary school in Norfolk.
The design of St Michael’s Church of England Primary School, in South Lynn near King’s Lynn, includes a two-storey cylindrical structure. While the walls of the 9m-diameter ‘drum’ were formed using wooden panels, around 1,600m of Boise’s BCI Joists were used to create the roof cassette and 850m of Versa-Lam LVL beams formed the parapet wall running around its perimeter. BCI Joists feature LVL flanges and OSB webs.
“The main reason for using the engineered joists over a more traditional option was control of quality,” said Dominic Arend of consulting engineer JP Chick & Partners. “This was particularly important to the main roof over the reception where the roof not only acted as support to the single ply roof with relatively long spans, but also as a diaphragm deck. This was clad in plywood to provide restraint to the bottom chord of the Metsec truss also used as the parapet structure.”
The base area was erected in just two days.
