Unitrunk Saves Time and Costs At Leeds City Council Scheme

Unitrunk’s Rapid Installation Systems (RIS) cable management is to be used throughout the refurbishment and extension of Merrion House in Leeds as part of Leeds City Council’s property rationalisation initiative.

The 10 storey building, jointly owned by Town Centre Securities Plc and Leeds City Council as part of a long-term partnership between public and private sectors, is being refurbished to enable capacity to be increased from 1200 to 1900 occupants in a project that also involves the construction of a 50,000 sq ft, five storey extension. The project is designed to help the council move to a more flexible and contemporary workspace while reducing the number of buildings it occupies.

Electrical contractor, G&R Electrical, has been appointed by BAM Construction to carry out all electrical installation work across the refurbishment and new build aspects of the scheme. The company will use Unitrunk’s Uniklip cable tray for the risers to take sub mains cabling from the basement switch room up the full height of the building. From here, each floor will have a network of Unitrunk’s EasyConnect cable basket in the ceiling void for data cabling, and low voltage cabling for the fire alarm, security and building management cabling, while small power and lighting cabling will be installed in Unitrunk’s single compartment trunking.

All services will be installed in the ceiling voids for levels one to nine, while the larger floor to ceiling heights on level ten will enable installation of cable management in the raised access floor. G&R will only install cat A supplies at ground floor level, which will become retail units on completion of the refurbishment project. Comments Gary Ineson from G&R Electrical: “Because all the electrical services have to be installed in quite congested ceiling voids across most of the building, ease and speed of installation were even more important to us.
“Unitrunk has re-engineered cable management to take away the fiddly elements of nuts and bolts, with clip on connectors allowing us to install it securely much quicker and more easily. That innovative approach saves us lots of time on site and the reduction in man hour costs more than offsets the product costs.”

G & R Electrical will complete the refurbishment project before moving on to the new build when construction begins on this element of the scheme. The project is due to complete in February 2018.