As part of the Welsh Government’s ’21st Century Schools’ programme, Torfaen county borough is closing 3 sixth-forms and amalgamating them into a single 1300-pupil, 4-storey, £20M sixth-form facility in Cwmbran town centre – the Torfaen Learning Zone. The new sixth form college, run jointly by Torfaen council and Coleg Gwent, will open in September 2020, and will offer 25 A Level subjects, 16 vocational qualifications, foundation degrees and the Welsh Baccalaureate. The 6th form college is the first element of the plan to regenerate the brownfield site next to the Cwmbran shopping centre, and subsequent developments on the site will include an office block, a hotel and a food and drink retail unit.
Studwelders began work onsite in March 2019, and finished installing the composite floor decks to the 4 storeys of the 6th form in June 2019. In that time, Studwelders installation teams fitted over 5500 square metres of MetFloor 60 steel decking and approximately 11,000 CSC steel shear studs. Both of these metal products are formed by Construction Metal Forming, based on the northern edge of Pontypool, which itself is just north of Cwmbran, meaning this is an exceptionally local contract for CMF, who are used to supplying their cold-formed steel products across the length and the breadth of the country. The MetFloor range of steel decking consists of the traditional dovetail re-entrant MetFloor 55, the long-span trapezoidal MetFloor 60, and the ultra-long span trapezoidal MetFloor 80. Each decking profile is manufactured in 3 different gauges – 0.9mm, 1.0mm and 1.2mm thicknesses of steel. In this project, Studwelders installed over 3,500 square metres of 0.9mm MF60, over 1600 square metres of 1.2mm MF60, and an additional 57 square metres of 1.2mm MF80. The deck was welded to the steel frame using CSC steel shear studs and Studwelders’ through-deck welding techniques. In order to perform their decking and welding operations, they first installed safety netting across all 4 storeys of the structure. Finally, in order to deliver their integrated deck and slab design, Studwelders performed their concreting operations on top of all the MetFloor decking. Studwelders are members of the Concrete Society and comply with the industry standard SCI P300 protocol.
CFD Group hope to win future local projects, including the further development of the sixth form college site with the hotel, office block, and retail unit.
