Walsh has a track record and culture of innovation and thinking differently about everyday structural solutions. We have technical teams within the business seeking to improve our designs and processes while seeking to optimise our use of available technology.
We believe firmly in lean design, reducing any unnecessary design conservatism. Walsh proposals are scrutinised at each stage to ensure that value is achieved and that designs are developed in line with the cost plan.
As a project progresses through detailed design, Walsh’s broad knowledge of innovative construction methods can be called upon to ensure that the unique design requirements and interfaces are resolved well before construction begins on site.
Walsh has won several awards for innovation in areas such as top-down construction, innovative basement solutions, early adoption of post-tensioning techniques and off-site construction.
We have delivered designs in volumetric modular, precast frames, traditional timber frame light gauge steel cassettes, structural insulation panels, cross-laminated timber, and steel frames with precast slabs. With experience in all of these forms of construction, Walsh are in a position to offer our considered advice on the suitability of a range of options at an early stage of development.
On Cobalt Place, Walsh used CLT to dramatically reduce embodied carbon. Cross-laminated timber was used to create a building with 5.9% less embodied carbon than a traditional reinforced concrete (RC) design. Under the London Borough carbon offset systems, an equivalent saving in CO₂ emissions compared to that achieved on the Cobalt Place development from using a timber frame over an RC one would cost between £3.2m and £4.8m.
Walsh is currently working under NDA with a major commercial developer on CLT timber hybrid structural options and MMC prefabrication options.
One area Walsh are particularly proud of is the innovation achieved with our geotechnical partners at CGL and now our in-house geotechnical team. Numerous technical papers have been written on the exemplary work in relation to buttress piles which Walsh have utilised at Warwick Road, Prince of Wales Road, and Camberwell College of Arts.
Additionally, papers were published on our work at Calder’s Wharf, where we re-engineered an uneconomic foundation design to install a sunken raft solution in difficult ground conditions over the DLR tunnels.
In recent years, Walsh has been assisting MACE with the design and detail of their High-Rise Solutions. Walsh have pioneered the design for the full-depth precast panels for slabs, walls and columns and led the coordination with the associated parties. This has led to us assisting in the logistic management of the system and requires us to determine reference numbers for elements which get embedded into the Revit files. Ynomia are MACE partners which then physically asset track the panels through manufacture to site via Bluetooth transmitters. The systems track the progress of the build virtually in the cloud, all based on the Walsh Revit model and asset numbers.
Temporary works is another area of technical innovation where Walsh solved tricky construction sequence problems with innovative design solutions. At St Helens Place in the City of London, Walsh designed the temporary works for a six-storey stone façade retention system, while the façade was being undermined for a three-storey basement excavation. The design also had to accommodate site access through the façade, the temporary works to the party walls and zero movement to the adjacent 800-year-old church.
On Oxford Street, Walsh designed temporary works for a façade retention system that allowed the façade to be raised by 900mm, while the basement was excavated and works to Crossrail restricted external access.
This prestigious residential and commercial development features an extravagant Sky Pool placed between two of the structures. Walsh worked on all eight plots at Embassy Gardens adopting a number of innovative solutions across the development. Along with collaboration with the pool designers to ensure compatibility of building movements and sway at the support points we used a variety of structural forms including steel and concrete long span hybrid systems.
Sustainability is in our DNA and we have our own ambitious goals to achieve Net Zero as a business and with our designs. With innovative in-house monitoring tools, Walsh clients have seen on average reductions of 10-20% total embodied carbon, with some of our flagship work achieving 60-70% reductions compared with baseline figures.
