Shelter That Works Around the School Day
Every day at Hilliard State School, students, teachers and parents move between classrooms, the oval, the canteen and the gymnasium. The school’s existing covered walkways had aged and become high maintenance, so for new walkways connecting these areas, the school and the Queensland Government wanted something more practical and appealing.
That meant a structure with less steelwork, cleaner and cooler underneath, and quieter in the rain. It also had to be built on a live school site without getting in the way of the children using it.
The Materials
Principal contractor Akela Constructions engaged Action Sheetmetal, an Ausdeck client, to supply and install the roofing for the covered walkways and a small connecting awning. Ausdeck Insulated Roofing Panels were selected for their clean lines, spanning capability and ease of installation.
Each panel combines a roof, insulation and pre-finished ceiling in one product, giving a clean finish underneath, while the panel’s spanning capability reduces the steelwork needed to support it. As Ausdeck Business Development Manager John explains, “This 3-in-1 roof structure minimises trades on site just by using our system.”
Action installed ribbed insulated panels in two thicknesses: 300 square metres at 75 mm and 90 square metres at 150 mm. Action also supplied the flashings, purlins and hot-dip galvanised SHS posts.
The walkway starts at the bottom of a hill between two classrooms. It climbs the slope, turns right and runs up to the oval before continuing through to the canteen and gymnasium.
The Execution
A working school leaves little room for error on delivery day. With school traffic and children on site, deliveries needed to be on-site and offloaded before 8 am or after 5 pm. Ausdeck preloaded most deliveries early in the morning and had trucks on site by 7 am, so everything could be crane-unloaded and kept isolated while students were at school. Crane access and long panel lengths added to the logistics challenge.
Action Sheetmetal and Ausdeck Building Systems worked hand in hand from the outset, with detailed planning to meet the tight timeframes that were essential for Akela Constructions and the school.
Ausdeck manufactured and delivered the full order on schedule. Steve and the Action Sheetmetal team then installed the walkways over several weekends, when the school was empty, so students, teachers and the public weren’t disrupted at all.
The collaboration with Akela Constructions delivered an excellent result for everyone involved.
The Result
Compared with the school’s existing walkways, the new walkways are cleaner, easier to maintain and better suited to Queensland’s harsh sun. They are also much quieter. The rigid EPS foam core between the top and bottom steel skins acts as a dense acoustic dampener, absorbing much of the rain noise a single-skin roof lets through. That is a real benefit for the classrooms next to the walkways. “The noise transmission there is now reduced by a minimum of 40% compared to a single-skin roofing application,” says John.
For Action Sheetmetal, the project delivered a quality, finished result for Akela Constructions, completed around the school timetable with no disruption to classes.
Project Video
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