Millfield Green is a senior living village comprising of the main Village Centre, a Maintenance Centre, an Energy Centre and an ALU (Assisted Living Unit) block.
Millfield Green is a new retirement village in Bedfordshire. The village has been carefully designed with wellbeing in mind - from the accessibility and ease of use in each home, to the social and physical benefits of the clubhouse facilities, wellness spa and gym.
Working with our client, Willmott Dixon, DTE provided a full roof design service, prior to trussed rafters, ancillary timber and metalwork being supplied by our team in Oxford.
The roof area of the village centre is over 4,500m2, which is a considerably large area. A total of 1176 trussed rafters were supplied to the project, and 1071 of those were for the village centre alone. The total timber cube for all three roof structures is approximately 250m3. A total of 1089 sheets of plywood are being utilised within the village centre roof structure for stability bracing purposes.
The village centre is the main focal point and consists of a steel frame structure with a steel sheet flat roof in the centre, and the external perimeter roof formed by the trussed rafters. The combination of the steel sheet flat roof and trussed rafters provides the necessary stability for the steel frame. The entire steel frame at roof level is hidden within the depth of the timber members.
The full roof structure was based on Revit models provided by the client’s architect and structural engineer. This meant all information, from ridge heights to eaves heights and overhang dimensions, had to be measured from the models rather than being provided in the traditional form of drawings. The roof structure was extremely complex to design given the variation in levels of wall supports, ridge heights, roof intersections and the profile of the roof. In addition to this, where the steel frame was hidden within the timber depth, alternative support methods of the timber had to be thought of, designed and detailed. The team here at DTE worked closely with the client and other members of this project team to ensure a smooth delivery of this full roof design.
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Graham continues, "The team have been extremely professional from the initial concept design, through to the detailed design, material scheduling and executing site deliveries on time. This has ensured that the roofing works can flow seamlessly and that we could plan future associated roofing works and organise internal trades with a great amount of confidence.
A collaborative relationship between DTE and our design team has helped this project to be a success. With the extremely challenging build programme, having DTE working alongside us has been invaluable and helped to achieve the successful delivery of our overall product offering to our customer, Inspired Villages.
DTE - thank you for being a great company to work with and we look forward to working on future projects together.”
“The total design time for all three roofs was approximately 20 weeks. The main village centre alone was in the design phase for around 18 weeks, and this roof structure is probably in the top 5% of extremely obscure roofs I have had to design over my 33 years in this industry, but also one of the most exciting projects that I’ve had the pleasure of working on.” – Martin Cox, Head of Engineering at DTE.
Here at DTE, we don’t just quote for roof trusses, but instead our clients benefit from a genuinely comprehensive timber engineering service that can save time, money and hassle. Find out more here.