30 Waring Taylor Street

The seismic upgrade of the building at 30 Waring Taylor Street was always going to be a challenging project.

As a historic building it has a façade that can’t be altered, and being on a smaller street between Lambton and Customhouse Quays makes the logistics for truck deliveries and cranes difficult. A third factor is the neighbouring buildings hard against it on two sides, which makes access difficult and adds to the complexity of the work.

Our work was lauded by SCNZ as we won the inaugural SCNZ Awards 2022 under Seismic Strengthening category

With a number of the existing structural elements of the building needing to be altered to allow the installation of the new seismic works, a large amount of preliminary and temporary works were required to keep the structure safe until the new steelwork was fully installed.

A lot of the work that we did on this building was Architectural Exposed Structural Steel which can be seen when the building is completed. This means that the steel fabrication, particularly welds and bolt plates, needs to be finished to a much higher standard than structural steel that is going to be hidden.

A highlight of this project for us wasn’t related to the seismic upgrade. It was the exposed steel spiral staircase. A bit out of the ordinary for our fabrication team, with the sides made of rolled and curved 10mm plate, it was a challenge that they enjoyed. The staircase is installed and will a real feature of the building when the final paint and finish is done.