Structural Design Partner for Cyprus Developers

A five-storey apartment building on a 220 m² footprint with a pilotis ground floor given over to parking. The structural problem is the one every developer meets on this typology: the column grid that suits fifteen apartment layouts above is not the grid that suits cars below, and the pilotis storey removes the infill walls that would otherwise stiffen the ground floor. The answer was a column arrangement negotiated against both layouts rather than either one, with the lateral system sized for the soft-storey condition Eurocode 8 penalises here. Beam-column joints were checked for capacity to confirm ductile behaviour under seismic demand — a check that goes beyond minimum requirements on a building of this height, and one that costs far less at design stage than at assessment.

A commercial office tower where the brief refused intermediate columns on the office floors. Clear spans exceeding 10.5m on every level, glass façade on the most exposed elevations, and an RC basement two levels below grade. The structural strategy is hybrid because the economics are: an RC basement resolving earth pressures, parking geometry and the transition into the superstructure, where concrete is the cheaper answer; a steel superstructure above, where the spans and the erection programme make steel pay for itself. Joints were designed with FEM analysis (IDEA StatiCa) where connections carry meaningful demand, rather than defaulted to standard details. Structural design completed; drawings issued for quantity surveying.

The ground is where development budgets go missing. This site sits on montmorillonite clay — an expansive soil that swells and contracts as moisture cycles seasonally, threatening differential movement under any conventional foundation. Left to be discovered on site, that becomes redesign, delay and remediation. The answer was a raft foundation underpinned by piles that bypass the expansive layer and bear on stable substrate beneath, sized once the geotechnical picture was properly understood. The cost was taken deliberately, at foundation level, at design stage. The superstructure above was then free to be built normally.

A two-unit development where the brief was explicitly commercial: spacious layouts, economical material use, and a structure that could be built efficiently on both plots. No sculptural ambition to protect and no unusual constraint to solve — which makes it a fair test of a different question, namely whether the engineer designs for the cost of construction or simply for compliance. Member sizing, reinforcement detailing and the structural layout were worked against buildability and material quantity rather than defaulted to safe-and-heavy. The two units share a structural approach, so what was resolved once was delivered twice.

An industrial facility where the operation dictated the structure: 12.5m unobstructed spans to accommodate large loading vehicles and specialised equipment, across three 18.5m transverse bays at 6.5m eave and 9m ridge height. Truss beams support intermediate duo-pitch beams and cold-formed Z-purlins; portal frames provide horizontal stability; 18m canopy trusses with 3m cantilevers deliver 1,281 m² of covered loading across a 61m frontage. Foundations are pad footings with tie beams, sized to resist the moments that height and span generate on 200 kPa ground. Steel here is not a preference — at these spans it is the only economical answer, and it erects fast.