New Irish Life Headquarters, Abbey Street, Dublin 1

Congratulations to Irish Life, Walls Construction Limited, and the entire design team on the successful completion of this landmark development.

Barrett Mahony Consulting Engineers was pleased to provide temporary works design services to Hegarty Demolition and Walls Construction Limited throughout the delivery of this prestigious project.

The redevelopment involved extensive structural "cut and carve" alterations to the existing reinforced concrete buildings, requiring technically complex temporary works solutions. These measures were carefully designed to maintain the structures' vertical load-carrying capacity, overall lateral stability and stiffness, and resistance to disproportionate collapse during the construction phase, until the permanent structural system was fully established.

A particularly challenging aspect of the works was the removal of entire stair cores, lift cores, and significant areas of interconnected floor slabs. This necessitated the design and installation of an internal temporary braced steel frame to ensure the continued stability of the superstructure. To achieve positive load transfer into the temporary works system, the steel frame was systematically preloaded at multiple levels using hydraulic flat-jack props and load cells connected to a central monitoring and control system.

Projects such as this demonstrate the critical role that well-engineered temporary works solutions play in enabling complex structural transformations to be undertaken safely and efficiently. With more than 30 years of experience, Barrett Mahony Consulting Engineers has developed extensive expertise in the design and supervision of temporary works for complex structural alteration and demolition projects throughout Ireland and the UK.

Photos 1-4 courtesy of Walls Construction and Hegarty Demolition Ltd.