A high-specification office building close to Manchester Airport has been subject to a series of planned refurbishment contracts carried out by a sister company to the property developer which owns it, with the phased work including the upgrade of each floor or unit’s fire performance using smoke and flame barriers from the range of TBA FIREFLY.
Owned by Orbit Developments – part of the Emerson Group – Park Square is a modern commercial office building offering up to 65,000 sq. ft of space over five floors, together with café and other amenities in an attractive setting. As leases of various occupants expire, the Group’s fit-out contractor, Kirkham, strips out and refurbishes the vacated spaces, including installing TBA’s Phoenix barriers above the suspended ceiling grids before fitting new panels and improved lighting.
The Contracts Manager for Kirkham’s Contractors Ltd, Chris Atkinson, explained: ‘As the principal contractor for the Emerson Group, we carry out all of the refits when one of the rotating leases comes to an end and we have been utilising the Firefly range for some time now, including on other properties such as Sovereign House in Cheadle. We have also attended an installer training course, along with some of our sub-contractors, at TBA’s premises in Rochdale. That has proved very useful, both in terms of better understanding the performance requirements of the systems and also making us aware of other products in the range.
In the work carried out to date we have been securing the Phoenix barriers to metal frames – as well as folding and stapling the material to create the required laps, as the specification directs – in order to form a series of half-hour fire breaks up through the building with all of our work then being checked by Building Control. Time pressures are always a factor in our work so the speed and simplicity of fitting the Firefly is an important factor.’
TBA Firefly Phoenix is a lightweight smoke and flame barrier developed to enable compartmentation within buildings to provide up to 120 minutes integrity under BS476 Parts 20 & 22. Certified by IFCC the flexible and straightforward-to-install material is suitable for both new-build and retrofit situations. Manufactured from woven and non-woven glass, the Firefly range is designed to optimise resistance to flame and smoke as well as offer heat protection in a wide range of scenarios. The barriers are easy to install horizontally or vertically using a full selection of ancillary products.
Chris Atkinson concluded: ‘We are now planning to use the FIREFLY ZEUS Lite 90:30 fire barrier in another part of Park Square when it comes free, in order to futureproof the work against potential higher specifications which might be introduced.’
For more information, go to www.tbafirefly.com
