Located in a prominent position on Morecambe’s seafront, retailer Aldi wanted to replace its existing dated, pitched slated roof store, with an attractive, modern and eye-catching building designed with curved aluminium details that would make it stand out from its competitors.

Since Complete Roofing Systems had installed and maintained the slated roof for the original brick building, we were chosen to install the new composite quadcore sheet roof and aluminium rainscreen cladding. This was carried out by working closely with Kingspan to design and install the manufacturer’s new Dri-Design rainscreen system.

Leading the construction programme, our team had to overcome bad weather and logistical challenges to deliver a project that met the client’s aspirations.

The curved aluminium detailing, junctions between the cladding and stonework, plus a new-to-the-market rainscreen system, demanded exceptional workmanship and close collaboration between our in-house design team, site operatives and Kingspan.

As with all our projects, we followed industry best practice and recommendations, including the fourth edition of Profiled sheet roofing and cladding – The NFRC guide to design and best practice (the Blue Book), BS 5427:2016+A1:2017 ‘Code of practice for the use of profiled sheet for roof and wall cladding on buildings’ and Kingspan’s manufacturing guides.

The result was a refurbishment project that delivered on the client’s aspirations within budget and to a timely manner.

As with all our projects, we made safety a priority and the team was given comprehensive site inductions and RAMS at the start of the project. Toolbox talks were carried out by our site foreman and a dedicated safety officer also visited the site to carry out safety audits at unspecified dates/times.

One key area of safety focus on this project was managing the installation of cladding and rainscreen adjacent to a live pedestrian footpath, which led to the existing Aldi store. This took careful planning and constant presence of a banksman when using mobile elevated platforms (MEWP) alongside the path. Our operatives used tool tethers whilst in their MEWPs to prevent falling equipment.

The site boundary had to be altered on a daily basis to suit the progress and constantly shifting work area. This was done out of hours to limit the effect on the public using the footpath.

The site team overcame several challenges to complete the project successfully:

First and foremost was the challenge posed by the confined site, as the new store was being constructed in the car park of the old building, which was still fully operational throughout the construction programme. With only one access point into the site for deliveries – shared by Aldi and the neighbouring Morrison’s supermarket – exceptional logistical and traffic management was required for the delivery of materials, in order to avoid disruption to the client’s business operations.

Our team also had to contend with bad weather coming in straight off the Irish Sea. High winds made the handling of large metal sheets difficult, with work having to stop for two days due to exceptionally high winds, along with the roof covering being strapped down.

This was a complex project involving the bespoke fabrication of curved interlocking aluminium facias at one corner of the store. The main and lower roof followed this footprint curve and each created a challenge to achieve an effective weather seal and a high standard of finish/tolerances.

Kingspan’s new Dri-Design painted aluminium cassettes and the mix of modern composite rainscreen with traditional stonework were also used. This was the first project ever to use the new Dri-Design system, which Kingspan has developed for fast installation, with minimal components and robustness against harsh weather. We were therefore acting as ‘test pilots’, which required us to work closely with the manufacturer to ensure it was well-designed and installed.

The unusual junctions between the cladding/rainscreen and traditional stonework also demanded a meticulous attention to detail. The tight site boundary (alongside a live store and public footpaths) made our working operations very difficult to manage. Our experienced site team managed this on a daily basis alongside the other trades working on site.

Read more about the sheeting and cladding systems we install.