Ocean Spa Plaza, Gibraltar

We completed Category 3 design checks for our client Ramboll GIB on scaffolding used for the construction of the £40m Ocean Spa Plaza, an elliptical-shaped luxury housing and spa complex in Gibraltar.

We were called on to provide our checking expertise for a replacement scaffold after a severe storm caused the dramatic collapse of the original scaffold, resulting in a health and safety investigation and a number of recommendations for improvements.

The complex geometry of the building required that we pre-assess several elements of the site prior to completing our design checks. These included the calculation of site specific wind loading within a combination of 7 different load cases, the analysis of the scaffold boards, scaffold members and connections, as well as calculating live loads for 2 different scaffold towers.

We analysed the scaffold for a variety of different load cases including self-weight of the scaffold members & board, live load for both scaffold tower, and 4 different working wind load scenarios.

We also analysed 2 different loading combinations to relevant factors of safety. Our structural calculations provided our client with maximum axial forces, maximum standard load and maximum tension tie load for both load combinations. 

Our analysis concluded that the design of the replacement scaffolding did not meet the regulatory requirements and we recommended additional strengthening works to our client. These included the insertion of a horizontal butt tube between the two diagonal tie members to reduce shear and horizontal tie loading to a safe limit, the installation of a tie tube at every lift point of the scaffold to tie the scaffold towers together and avoid the requirement for façade bracing on every tower