on-site screw-ups

[Amanda_931]

Prefab apartment building in England.  Headline has it coming down because of an on-site screw-up--MTL it will be blamed on the people who transported--or loaded--the parts so that the first ones to go onto the building should have been the last.  In any case, the people at the assembled it backwards.

Or the whole thing could have been over-engineered enough that there would be no difference in the modules--it was only five stories high--nothing like the World Trade Center buildings.

Now all that lovely triple-paned glass will be broken--or salvaged.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/lowcost_modern.php#ch03

In 2000, CASPAR (City-centre Apartments for Single People at Affordable Rents) was a hot property. Built without subsidy by the Rowntree Foundation in Leeds, this competition entry was to be "an attractive building that would encourage economically-active single people to make the city centre their home... Use of advanced, pre-fabrication techniques has enabled the five-storey block to be built quickly to a high specification that includes triple glazing and more space than is usual in one-bedroom flats...Each unit in the CASPAR development was factory-built by Volumetric, a supplier specialising in pre-fabrication, and transported to the site half-assembled and half in a flat pack. Kajima UK, the contractors, were able to install the apartments by crane. As a result, the first apartment went on show just 66 days after the site was purchased and the building contract signed."

Unfortunately there were a few problems, apparently including putting the stronger, heavier ground floor units on the top and vice versa, described in the Guardian as "fatal mismatches". ARUP, the UK's leading engineering consultants, had a look and "said "Yipes – get out of there before the next storm." What they've actually said is that there is a 2% chance that the whole building will collapse in high winds. JRF have even admitted that, if the cost of repairing the fault is excessive, they will consider demolishing the whole structure."

[MountainDon]

Don't ya just love it!    I guess there's a reason they can't disassemble it like Lego's and stick it back together the right way.

[glenn kangiser]

10 to 1 the local building authority approved all of it as it went together-- but they got their tax money I'm sure.