Engineering and manufacturing for building risk management
Two sides of the same problem: the analysis that decides what a building needs, and the hardware that delivers it.
Engineering Practice
Seismic, vibration, fire and data centre risk engineering for building structures and interiors, as well as piping, ductwork, cable tray and MEP equipment.
Our engineering servicesProducts & Manufacturing
Spring and rubber isolators, seismic restraints, bracing systems and vibration isolation products, manufactured in 65+ variants and shipped to 50+ countries.
Our products
Engineering practice
Our Engineering Practice
A building inherits whatever the ground does, and whatever happens inside it. Our engineering work is about the consequences of that: what an earthquake does to the equipment that keeps a hospital running, what a passing train does to a laboratory floor, what a fire does to a data hall before anyone smells smoke. These are different problems with a common shape: a force or an event the building has to absorb without losing the function it was built for.
Where this comes from
Acrefine Engineering Services Ltd has manufactured and supplied seismic restraint and vibration isolation products for nearly twenty years. The engineering behind that goes back further: close to three decades of work on how vibration and seismic force move through structures, and on what actually holds up on site rather than on paper.
That history is why our engineering starts at equipment scale and works outward. Most consultancies approach a building from the structure down and treat building services as somebody else's coordination problem. We came the other way: from the pipe, the pump and the fixing, up to the building that contains them. It is a narrower place to start and a more useful one, because it is where most seismic and vibration failures actually happen.
- ~20years manufacturing seismic and vibration products
- ~30years of seismic and vibration engineering
- 65+product variants
- 50+countries supplied
What we cover
Six lines of work. They overlap more than the list suggests: a data centre project can touch four of them at once.
- Seismic Calculations for EquipmentWhen a piece of equipment has to be shown to survive a design event, and the submittal needs engineering behind it.
- Seismic Bracing DesignWhen pipework, ductwork and containment have to stay in place and hand their load to the structure safely.
- Noise and Vibration ControlWhen equipment is close enough to occupied space that somebody is going to feel it or hear it.
- Fire Safety EngineeringWhen the prescriptive code route does not fit the building, and the case has to be made by analysis instead.
- Structural Base IsolationWhen the answer is to break the connection between the building and the ground, for seismic or vibration reasons.
- Data Centre SafetyWhen the cost of an incident is measured in downtime rather than damage.
How we work
On building services seismic restraint and vibration isolation, we are appointed directly, typically by the M&E contractor, the developer or the consultant responsible for the services design. We work from the equipment schedule and the drawings, and deliver the calculations, the restraint and isolation design, and the submittal behind it. Site verification is added when the client asks for it.
Our designs are not tied to our products: where another manufacturer’s equivalent suits the project, we specify it.
On structural seismic, isolation and fire safety work, we are appointed directly by owners and developers, or by the consultancy that leads the project, and our work goes into the project’s design under the sign-off arrangements below.
Responsibility and sign-off
Every calculation and report we issue is signed by the Acrefine engineer responsible for it. Statutory sign-off is a separate step, given by whoever the project’s jurisdiction names for it. In the United Kingdom, for structural seismic and fire safety work, that is the project’s appointed chartered engineer. Elsewhere, where local rules require an engineer licensed in that country, they give it and we work alongside them. Either way, our work is prepared so that sign-off can be given on it.
Products and manufacturing
Products and Manufacturing
Acrefine's products are spring and rubber isolators, vibration isolation hangers and pads, seismic snubbers, cable bracing and inertia bases. Our seismic products are tested to the ANSI/ASHRAE 171 method at a UKAS-accredited laboratory in the UK.
They are used wherever equipment has to be resiliently mounted yet seismically restrained: MEP and HVAC equipment, industrial machinery such as refrigeration compressors, piping, ductwork, cable trays and suspended ceilings. Standard products can be bought online from our group company Fixing Smith; heavy-duty and tailor-made products are quoted by us.
More about Acrefine
Talk to an engineer.
Describe the building and what you are trying to prevent. We will tell you what it takes, and if it falls outside our work, who to talk to.