Engineering Design Consultants

The Challenge of Building in the Antarctic

Send to a colleague

Continued...

It weighs approximately 55 tonnes and can be pulled by bulldozers once the skids have been broken free of the ice by inflatable airbags.

The garage was designed in modular form with the minimum number of components and fixings so that it could be handled and assembled easily. No special tools were needed, and fixings were a convenient size to work with, given that staff wear thick gloves virtually all the time when outdoors at Halley. The building itself and all the services and fittings have been designed for minimal maintenance because of the cost of transporting materials to the Antarctic and the difficult working conditions.

When Halley 5 was built, it was designed to accommodate about 40 people -- 20 all-year-round staff and another 20 or so in the summer. In fact, there are frequently more than 20 summer visitors at the station, so steel-framed insulated fabric structures were used to provide extra accommodation. However, these had a relatively short life and were costly and time-consuming to keep in a usable condition.

In 1994 Bennett Associates and VM Fabrications were commissioned by the BAS to design and build a permanent self-contained structure with sleeping accommodation and mess-room facilities, complete with power and heating, furniture and furnishings, catering equipment and storage. This was again to be mounted on skids so it could be re-located.