At the Clyde campus in Glasgow, Style worked directly with Glasgow City Council on a very specific brief for providing flexible space in the main school hall.

Safety was a key criterion due to the sheer height of the room. To sub-divide the space required 7.5 metre panels weighing 700kg each. Manoeuvring a moveable wall of that stature was deemed a potential manual handling risk, making it important for Style to demonstrate its CDM credentials.

CDM is the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, which are the main set of regulations for managing the health, safety and welfare of construction projects.

“We chose a DORMA Variflex 100 SE moveable wall solution, with incredible 57dB acoustic integrity, because it’s ideal for high ceilings,” said David Louden, Style’s director for Scotland.

“The DORMA Variflex system is assembled on site making it safe to install from a manual handling perspective and it was to be supported by DORMA’s new programmable I-track system. This track with switches and curves allows panels to be easily moved into position without risk to the operator. (See video)

“Some moveable wall solutions use aluminium track with 90-degree corner units, and these corners present a point of impact if the system is used incorrectly. This point of impact at a height of 7.5 metres is not immediately obvious to the operator and if the damage was to go unseen can lead to structural failure with catastrophic consequences.

“We therefore installed DORMA’s curved I-track system which replaces the 90 degree with a gentle curve, enabling the kinetic energy from each panel to assist in changing the direction of the panel into and out of its parking location. No point of impact and no risk to the operator.

“In addition to the curved track the Variflex system was specified with semi-automatic seals to reduce the effort in relocating the wall and to speed up the process of space reconfiguration”.