With nineteen years experience in interiors, Clayton Nelson has built and managed the build of more ceiling and partitions than he can count. As he says, there are only so many ways to skin a cat. When Clayton engages an engineer for a seismic design, he sometimes spots an easier or more cost effective way to do it. Usually there are a few tweaks to be made, and with a bit of correspondence they get there.
On discovering Prenguin, Clayton was excited about the artistic license it would give him.
“I can create seismically compliant designs that are really efficient, which is great for my clients. It’s so easy to try different elements and play around with sizes and quantities. It gives me much more scope to do things creatively,” he explains.
Clayton is one of Prenguin’s early users. As the General Manager for Alpha Interiors Waikato, he often takes responsibility for the design of new projects. Clayton has used Prenguin for both large and small ceiling and partition jobs. The first was a small office fit out of about ten rooms, and the second was a larger project for a dementia ward of about 200 rooms. He got some help from his team with the larger project. In fact, most of the team are signed up to use Prenguin (it is free after all!). Clayton describes his team of Project Managers as keen for any opportunity to upskill. In a culture where learning and progression are celebrated, the team are more than happy to add seismic design to their skillset.
Clayton sees a place for Prenguin on any standard jobs. It will do the design for about ninety percent of Alpha’s projects, Clayton predicts. This is good news, as the time it takes to get a PS1 through Prenguin is only a couple of days (slightly longer for a really big project).
Clayton has also found it really helpful for tendering purposes. As he explains, it only takes a short amount of time to load a project, and from there he can determine the provisional sums for seismic. Having more information in the tender makes for a fairer and more transparent process.
If you would like to find out more about using Prenguin for the seismic design of ceilings and partitions, visit our help page. Or if you want to give it a go you can sign up by registering in the top right corner of the webpage, or clicking here.