Architectural Design & Design Team Leader Oilver Khoo

26,500 sq.ft.

The brief called for a highly secure, blast resistant design, 24/7/365 operational requirement which was both technically challenging as well as providing a safe and comfortable work environment unlike previous generations of signaling facilities. Located on 'narrow & long' railway land parcels BDG derived a with a fast-track build solution strategy by designing a modular building around a central, flexible, column-free internal space allowing flexible space configuration of signalers cluster desk layouts for future operations. By surrounding the operational space with support functions similar to an 'onion ring' layers, allows the central area protection in the unlikely act(s) of terrorism. Natural daylight, external views and draK-free thermal comfort were polled and it was deemed highly desirable by the signaling operators. A comfortable constant internal comfort was achieved by using proven ‘Thermodeck’ construction techniques as a low energy concept. Spanning over 14.2m (largest on a UK project) this principle allows mechanical air ventilation drawn through the centre of hollow-core floor slabs enabling a constant internal temperature whatever the temperature was outside.