FIREFLY HELPS SAFEGUARD HOSPITAL EXPANSION
A £312 million project to expand clinical facilities and refurbish the A&E facilities at The Royal Shrewsbury Hospital is one of the first major construction contracts to make use of FIREFLY Span, a high performance linear joint seal that helps achieve effective compartmentation in a variety of construction settings.
The work is being led on behalf of the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital Trust by main contractor Vinci with sector specialist architectural and building consultants AHR leading the design team. Complete Fire Solutions (NW) is the Manchester-based specialist subcontractor undertaking the installation of the one-hour intumescent fire seal.
Site Manager for Complete Fire Solutions, Dewi Grundy, said: “Our responsibilities on this project include executing all of the penetration seals and tasks like applying the intumescent paint protection to all of the new steels which have gone up, while I am currently also conducting a survey to see if there are any locations where we might need to install one of the FIREFLY barrier systems. During the survey for the protection of the various construction joints in the newly built walls, the use of Span was agreed upon and subsequently installed.
“There are some 350 linear metres of construction joints to be addressed across the job enabling us to use the 50 x 50mm version of the product. The depth of the walls are mainly 130mm – constructed either in reinforced concrete or as plasterboard partitions – and they are all approximately four metres in height to the soffit.
“The FIREFLY technical manager has been to site to deliver the appropriate training for our operatives who are carrying out the work and he will return in due course to confirm that the all of the Span has been fitted correctly. The installation is really quite a straightforward operation, especially with all of the construction joints having been accurately formed and very regular.”
FIREFLY Span combines flexibility of application with complete dependability, having been developed to prevent the spread of fire, smoke and even sound through construction joints in walls and floors for a full 60 minutes. The product has been tested in accordance with BS EN 1366-4, confirming the viability of its open celled polyurethane foam structure – impregnated with fire resistant chemicals and bonded with layers of intumescent graphite. On exposure to heat the intumescent material rapidly expands to seal off gaps, stopping the passage of flames or hot gases. www.tbafirefly.com