Modern leisure centres are multi-faceted sporting hubs offering a range of facilities from swimming pools, fitness suites, squash courts and changing rooms, to cafes, meeting rooms and office space. Providing doorset solutions for a building with such an array of uses requires technical expertise, extensive experience working with the leisure sector, high performance products and an ability to create bespoke solutions.

These are exactly the qualities Leaderflush Shapland brings to a project, which is why Graham Construction selected it as a partner on the £17million Michael Woods Sports and Leisure Centre development in Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy. The state-of-the-art building is home to facilities including an eight-lane short course championship 25m pool, a 20m training pool with moveable floor, a 10m teaching pool, seating for 250 spectators, an 80-station fitness suite and squash courts as well as a café, administration area and meeting rooms.

This places a wide range of demands on the building’s doorsets and Graham Construction required a partner with the expertise to create solutions that rise to the specific challenges of the leisure sector. On this project these included supplying doorsets that can cope with severe duty use in a wet, humid environment while incorporating graphics that indicate clearly which part of the building a user is entering. Leaderflush Shapland supplied 133 performance doorsets to the project. It worked closely with Cre8 Architecture during the specification process to ensure the doorsets integrate with the design of the building and are suitable for each specific application, alongside meeting relevant Building Regulations and Building Standards.

The Plasform WR performance doorset was specified for wet areas such as the swimming pool and wet changing rooms. Plasform WR’s fully sealed cores and glazing systems offer enhanced water resistance in addition to the PVC encapsulation that characterises the Plasform range. This provides protection against the daily challenges of leisure environments, in which fixtures are exposed to humidity, water and chlorine based disinfectants. Rounded postformed edges and the lack of visible lippings also minimise the build-up of airborne particles, allowing easy cleaning and offering increased impact resistance.

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Furthermore Leaderflush Shapland’s engineered performance core, EnduraCor, was specified to provide increased durability and stability which is critical in a busy environment FD60 minutes fire resistance, in fire risk areas.

Leaderflush Shapland’s innovative Envision door facing also played an important role in meeting the architect’s design aspirations and improving usability for end users. Envision enables the intricate detail of high definition, photographic images to be incorporated into a factory assembled doorset. The image or design is digitally reverse painted and encapsulated behind 2mm of material, providing protection against wear.This design capability allowed clear, bright graphics of activities, such as weightlifting and swimming, or objects, such as showerheads, to be incorporated into doors where necessary to help end users navigate their way around the building.
Leaderflush Shapland’s Head of Marketing Stephen Hutsby says: “We worked with the architects to identify the best solutions for each situation and because of the flexible nature of Leaderflush Shapland’s products we could tailor them to meet specific requirements. For example, the image of a camera on the viewing platform doorset runs from the door face onto the glass. This meant we had to change the pigment slightly in the Envision material to match the manifestation colour.”

By manufacturing each performance doorset in a quality-controlled factory environment and delivering them fully-formed to site Leaderflush Shapland could ensure each component was configured correctly and was fit for purpose. Its site support team also gave an in depth installation-toolbox presentation to fitters to ensure doorsets were installed correctly and offer guaranteed certified performance once in situ.

This comprehensive service enables Leaderflush Shapland to meet the complex performance and design needs of leisure sector projects, such as the Michael Woods Sports and Leisure Centre, with doorsets that make a splash.