A striking residential tower, Southside Wandsworth made use of a small site adjoining the London borough’s central shopping centre at the back of the centre’s NCP car park.  The development comprises a 22-storey tower and a seven storey podium block each with their own staircase.  The seven storey block also has car parking on each level, access to which is available only via the existing NCP car park, which created issues surrounding smoke control, means of escape and fire service access. To address these challenges and the other complexities presented by the scheme’s unconventional layout, FDS Consult utilised the company’s innovative approach to fire design to devise a workable and cost-effective fire strategy that provided Rationalised Design savings of £500,000.

The FDS Consult team used its understanding of First Principles to address the issues created by the layout of the building and its proximity to the NCP car park and based an effective fire strategy around the specification of an enhanced smoke control system in the car park, which created a pressurised environment to prevent smoke from entering the residential building, even if an adjoining door were to be opened.  The strategy also involved the installation of fire curtains at each level of the seven-storey block to create a fire protection barrier between the residential accommodation and the car park.  The team then used its CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modelling expertise to justify this innovative approach, demonstrating the effectiveness of the strategy to reduce the fire systems specification, whilst maintaining high levels of safety.

Thanks to FDS Consult’s solution-driven approach, the client not only reduced the build costs of the scheme but was able to maximise saleable space on the tight site, maximising the development’s profitability.