Ramada, Ipswich
Design and Construction of a 126 bedroom hotel on three floors including reception, restaurant, two meeting rooms, all with comfort cooling and associated front and back of house areas. Externally there are 27 parking spaces in a courtyard area and a terrace area adjacent to the river.
Each bedroom includes comfort cooling, a pre-finished bathroom pod and is decorated and completed ready to receive fixture and fittings by client. The upper floors are served by two lifts and three staircases. A linen chute also links the upper floors with the laundry room on the ground floor. There are three plant-room areas that will serve the hotel, two of which are at roof level and one on the second floor.
The frame is constructed primarily from precast concrete walls erected from an insitu ground floor slab supported by Vibro stone columns. In order to achieve larger open areas for the ground floor restaurant and reception areas steel work was introduced into the precast frame. The precast walls and floor panels that form the sides and soffit of the bedrooms are Class A finish, suitable to be painted directly with limited making good. The inner leaf of the external elevations are in filled using a lightweight metal stud system with insulated boards installed as the frame is erected. The toilet pods as also installed as the frame is erected by utilising "just in time" deliveries. The precast frame system used, once the roof membrane had been laid to the roof, allowed an early commencement of 1st fix trades as well as the cladding of the envelope at the same time.
The external elevations are finished in a combination of facing brickwork, cedar cladding and rendered panels. The elevations to the public areas and feature staircase include curtain walling. There is a canopy / lobby to be formed over the main entrance to the courtyard. External works include block paved parking bays, tarmac access road, a raised patio area, brick planter and soft landscaping.
The site is adjacent to a residential development being undertaken by Fairview Homes. As a result access is very restricted and storage area and area for the site set up was very limited. To the south of the site, across from Ranelagh Road are existing residential housing. To the north is the River Orwell but is segregated by a narrow strip of land which Fairview's have constructed a footpath / cycle path together with soft landscaping. The east of the site is bounded again by a narrow strip of hard landscaping / cycle path again completed by Fairview's together remedial to an existing retaining wall which acts as a boundary to a very infrequently used railway line.