LABC’s Building Excellence Awards 2022 Grand Finals

Extremely proud to see we have been selected as a Regional Winner and are a shortlisted finalist for LABC‘s Grand Finals of their LABC Building Excellence Awards 2022. Selected for ‘Best Public or Community Building’ with The Roundhouse, Birmingham https://www.aksward.com/projects/the-roundhouse-birmingham/! View a full list of regional winners at https://lnkd.in/eByjwe-f thank you for your support and recognition. Best of luck to our fellow shortlisted! Congratulations to our team and associates.

The Grand Finals take place on Friday 27th of January 2023.

• Region: West Midlands
• Project Team: Kier Infrastructure /Regional Civils, Burrell Foley Fischer, National Trust & Canal & River Trust, AKSWard, Couch Perry Wilkes
• Local Authority: Acivico (Building Consultancy) Ltd

Summer Away Day 2022

In July this year during the extraordinary British heatwave, the AKSWard offices finally got back together at Merton College Grounds, Oxford – for a well-deserved ‘Away Day’. An event packed with ball sports, table tennis, cricket and BBQ’s; the team celebrated another successful summer!

COVID-19 really changed the landscape of how businesses just like ours work today, one of these changes being reduced social interactions (to put it nicely!). As a company that prides itself on its passion, creativity and inspiration; collaborating as a team is crucial to our projects. We are very proud of our team for handling those unprecedented times with initiative, never letting the pandemic get in the way of their spectacular work. Here at AKSWard we have adapted to these new ways of working – whilst remaining uninterrupted in delivering amazing results to our clients.

We believe it is important to emphasize the impact of people. You cannot design and build incredible infrastructure without people. We envisage structures powerful enough to host places of healing, learning and developing – whilst capturing the art of architectural beauty. All this and more, we cannot do without people.

Look below at some of the snapshots from the AKSWard Away Day 22’!

Old Palace Lodge Hotel, Dunstable: Repair and restraint of the old clunch wall

Our Technical Director Matt Groves has recently published an article about Old Palace Lodge Hotel in Dunstable repair and restraint of the old clunch wall in Listed Heritage magazine July/August issue.

The Old Palace Lodge Hotel was creating a Tudor garden landscaping scheme in the area of ground formerly occupied by ‘The Norman King’ public house. The Norman King was opened in the
1960s and comprised a thatched roof over predominantly brickwork walls. One wall of the building on the street facing elevation, however, incorporated a panel of much older, clunch stone masonry.

Clunch stone is another name for chalk when used in construction and is normally softer and more friable than other building stones. It is susceptible to weathering as it is highly permeable and susceptible to pollution driven acid erosion. Moisture is the principal cause of its deterioration. The clunch found in the wall panel would have come from the nearby Tottenhoe Quarry, part of a chalk seam that extends into Cambridgeshire and is often referred to as Cambridgeshire Clunch.

The site team were unable to find a solution that was acceptable to all parties and AKSWard was commissioned for their conservation knowledge to review the issues and propose a solution that would both be structurally secure and follow good conservation principles.

To read full article please follow the link below:

Matt Groves article for Listed Heritage – Old Palace Lodge Hotel, Dunstable

As seen in Listed Heritage, membership journal of the Listed Property Owners’ Club

www.lpoc.co.uk

Selecting the right beam repair

Our Technical Director Matt Groves has published an article about Selecting the right beam repair in Listed Heritage magazine July/August 2018 issue.

This article discusses the importance of understanding structural behaviour when making decisions about repairs. To demonstrate this it will consider variances in the scarf joints utilised in the repair of two different timbers of a 16th-century barn in Bedfordshire: the truss tie  and purlin.

In the first instance, it is important to understand the typical forces that arise in beams.

Beams are typically subject to tension, compression, shear, bending and torsion. Torsion is not relevant to the examples given here and will not be considered further. Tension is well understood and relates to a force that tries to pull an object apart. Compression is the opposite of tension and is again well understood. It refers to forces trying to push opposite ends of an object together.

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AKSWard COVID-19 Statement

The COVID-19 coronavirus is dominating the news and will impact all of us personally and professionally. AKSWard Ltd is responding to Government advice and this, as we know, is changing on a daily basis as the virus spreads. It is a great risk to our industry which relies of on collaboration to deliver successful projects.

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UK Structural Engineers Declare climate and biodiversity emergency

AKSWard just signed the UK structural engineers declare climate and biodiversity emergency declaration committing to support and participate in the climate change and biodiversity loss initiatives and share our knowledge with the industry.

Following in the footsteps of Architects Declare, we are urging UK structural engineers to sign an open letter to the Government declaring a climate and biodiversity emergency. Supported by BuroHappold and the Happold Foundation, Structural Engineers Declare is an important initiative fully supported by AKSWard.

Graduate Training Conference 2019

We held our 2^nd annual Graduate Training Conference at the headquarters of the Institution of Structural Engineers on the 4^th of March. The day led by our Managing Director Gary Allen and Graduate Training group chair Colin Seabrook included presentations, workshops and networking opportunities.

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