New Academy Building, Sussex University

The New Academy Building will include a 500-seat lecture theatre, both general and specialist teaching spaces, academic and support space, and social and café facilities, available for use by all parts of the University. The project started on site in September 2010 and soon after this John Cooper Construction appointed ConForce as their post tensioning subcontractor to design supply and install the post tensioning system.

Each floor consists of 2 long wings with an atrium between. All the suspended slabs in the building, floors 1 – 3 and roof with a total slab area of 6200 m² were designed as post tensioned slabs. This achieved major savings of floor depth and provided the client with long span (11m) flat slabs. Key parts of the ConForce design and detailing works for these slabs included devising a pour layout and sequence to mitigate restraint effects from walls and stair cores and designing tendon layouts to avoid live end anchorages on exposed concrete faces. The slabs are generally 375mm thick flat slabs with tendons in both directions; in some places top pockets are used for live end anchorages where anchorages on the slab edge are not permitted. There are 6 pours per floor with various types of construction joint or movement joint between.

ConForce started the design works in November 2010 and the site works in January 2011 with a site programme of approximately 4 months. Work is proceeding well and we look forward to another successful academic building to add to our portfolio.