Harsco expertise helps theatre project

The new theatre is being built on a site surrounded by existing buildings.

Harsco was asked to provide a support system to carry formwork for the construction of a number of 6 ft wide, 7 ft high, 105 ft long in-situ concrete beams.

These beams needed to span the stage area and also support a further 5 floors of apartments and office accommodation being built above.

The girder systems supplied by Harsco were to vary in length - with the longest being 30.90m - which needed to be lowered, relocated, and in some cases altered in length before work on the next beam could begin.

Working on behalf of Portuguese contractor BUILDIN, Harsco was able to draw on its wealth of technical expertise and devise a bespoke H33 braced truss-girder system which was sufficiently flexible and reliable to satisfy this demand.

The Harsco H33 beam system offers a flexible, robust and reliable solution with the high load-bearing capacity needed for this type of project.

Its excellent weight-to-capacity ratio made it ideal for the long spans involved, while the easy to assemble nature of the system components ensured rapid construction of the girders required.

This proved to be a faster, more cost-effective and practical solution than other alternatives which might have been used.

However a severe lack of working space on the site meant that Harsco also had to adapt the traditional methods used to construct such a system.