Protecting The New Children’s Hospital

The new National Children’s Hospital in Dublin continues to develop. Galco is proud to be involved in protecting the project`s steelwork against corrosion and also applying intumescent paint passive fire protection.

The hospital, which is under construction at St James’s Hospital in Dublin 8, is due to open in the second half of 2024. It will be 7 storeys at its highest and be the size of Dundrum Town Centre, with an internal street the length of Grafton Street.

Galco has galvanized approximately 450 tonnes of curved sections for the roof structure and has also been involved in applying fire protection for the steel walkways by shotblasting and applying an intumescent paint coating.

The work undertaken in Galco has allowed the interfacing façade works to be installed as soon as the steel framing was in place. This has accelerated the weathering of the areas and allowed the interfacing works to proceed on schedule.

Having this work carried out off-site has also overcome access risks and constraints of site applied intumescent to steel walkways crossing over 29 m high atrium voids.

Galco’s new painting facility allows for shot blasting of structural steel sections of 15 m in length and has a crane capacity of 10 tonnes. Our Quality Management System is approved to ISO 9001 and includes humidity, dew point, and steel temperature checks as well as wet and dry film coating thickness readings to ensure the coating quality is to the highest standard.

Firetex for Excellent Durability

The chosen fire protection system was Sherwin Williams Firetex FX6002. This was chosen as it is a fast curing product that optimised the application durations.

It is also a very robust product that has allowed the coated steelwork to be transported and erected without any damage to the coatings.

This is very valuable as it has mitigated any risk of unplanned site repairs and consequent delays to the site work.