Welbro Ship Roof to St. Helena - South Atlantic

The Island of St. Helena is a UK territory in the South Altantic. You will see from the map its pretty isolated so when Cable and Wireless wanted to construct a new building for their communications centre there they needed to ship in virtually all of the components, including the roof and steel structure, in 6m long containers. There is no airport on St. Helena so everything has to travel by sea.

Clearly, the building needed to be wider and longer than 6m so the design of the roof and steel structure had to be carefully thought out.

Welbro's "in house" team used their new steel fabrication workshops at Titchfield Hampshire to produce the steel structure in a "flat pack" form, making sure that everything bolted together correctly.

Whilst the steel fabrications department was working on the structure the roofing and cladding team were designing the roofing system and producing detailed construction drawings for the Cable and Wireless project team in St. Helena.

Working to a deadline where "the boat" could quite literally be missed Welbro managed to get all the components together for collection and containerisation, before the whole package was shipped to the Island.

Mark Heron is the Project Manager in St Helena and was responsible for the construction of the building once it had finished its 4,500 mile sea journey. With all the normal problems associated with a construction project being magnified by the shear remoteness of his location and the logistical difficulties that it brings, he had the unenviable task of constructing the building.

Like all projects there were a couple of minor issues that arose during the construction but using modern communication, provided in St. Helena by Cable and Wireless, he was able to sort things out. In a recent email he said "I am very pleased with the result and it (the roof) sets off our modular buildings very nicely. Your assistance throughout the project was always helpful and despite a couple of problems and the challenges of remoteness, the complete package went together smoothly"

Cable & Wireless is the telecommunications provider for St Helena, offering services including National and International telephone, International Direct Dialing, Internet, Broadband and television to this remote location in the middle of the South Atlantic.

The following pictures were kindly sent to Welbro by Mark Heron to show the completed project. The whole team at Welbro would like to thank Mark for these photographs and for the opportunity to work on such an interesting and challenging project, which they really enjoyed. If you would like to see these buildings or the Island in person you can find lots of useful information on visiting St. Helena by CLICKING HERE