A two-storey, 40-metre cov­ered dri­ving range built entire­ly from stan­dard ALFIX mod­u­lar scaffolding com­po­nents. The solu­tion is light, adjustable and went up quick­ly. 

When Tapi­o­la Golf need­ed a new cov­ered dri­ving range on dif­fi­cult ground con­di­tions, the answer came from an unex­pect­ed direc­tion: a scaffolding sys­tem famil­iar from con­struc­tion sites, this time built as a per­ma­nent struc­ture designed for pub­lic use. 

The old dri­ving range had reached the end of its life 

Tapi­o­la Golf is a high-qual­i­ty golf cen­tre and an active golf com­mu­ni­ty in the heart of Espoo, offer­ing a wide range of golf ser­vices. The cov­ered dri­ving range at the cen­tre had aged, and the ground beneath it had set­tled in places. Renew­al was due, but the con­di­tions were demand­ing: play could not be inter­rupt­ed mid-sea­son, and the new struc­ture had to work on dif­fi­cult ground. 

Jari Hakkarainen, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Tapi­o­la Golf, began map­ping out the options togeth­er with con­struc­tion spe­cial­ists MaxBuild Oy. MaxBuild Oy pro­vides project man­age­ment, con­sult­ing and build­ing ser­vices engi­neer­ing for con­struc­tion projects, and took on the project man­age­ment role here as well. 

The ques­tion that changed the pro­jec­t’s direc­tion 

Kris­to Herold, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of MaxBuild, says the idea for this unusu­al solu­tion first came up around two years ago. The thought arose of whether a scaffolding sys­tem might adapt to a struc­ture like this: “I asked Peter at Suo­mi Teline whether this could work – whether the scaffolding could be per­ma­nent rather than tem­po­rary,” Herold recalls. When Peter Korho­nen, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Suo­mi Teline, answered yes, the project moved ahead through ten­der­ing, design man­age­ment and the per­mit process. 

ALFIX, the Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­er of high-qual­i­ty scaffolding, joined the project as a nat­ur­al part­ner. Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Andreas Meier says ALFIX is active­ly look­ing for projects like this one: “It’s very inter­est­ing and always a sur­prise what is pos­si­ble with scaffolding mate­r­i­al.” 

The ground moves – but the scaffolding adjusts with it 

The hard­est part of the project was nei­ther the dimen­sions nor the loads, but the ground. “The clay and soil struc­tures in the area set­tle. The ball machine caus­es con­stant vibra­tion, and the mas­sive struc­tures built at the time only added to the set­tling. We start­ed from a blank sheet, work­ing out how to build a dri­ving range in a place where one side is sta­ble and the oth­er is sink­ing,” Herold explains. 

The answer turned out to be a fea­ture built into the scaffolding sys­tem itself: “The answer is sim­ple: adjusta­bil­i­ty. The struc­ture is mon­i­tored con­tin­u­ous­ly, and a full adjust­ment is made every year when the sea­son opens,” Herold says. 

It is also worth not­ing that no cus­tom-made parts were need­ed, as the entire struc­ture stayed with­in the sys­tem’s stan­dard dimen­sions. 

The bay dimen­sions were worked out through sev­er­al tri­al assem­blies, so that the result would also work from the play­er’s point of view. “There is no point build­ing a fine plat­form or build­ing that does­n’t work in prac­tice,” Herold notes. 

Cladding fin­ished the job 

The com­plet­ed struc­ture offers 27 bays and prac­tice places across two storeys, safe­ly designed for pub­lic use and clad so that the result looks like a fin­ished build­ing – not scaffolding. 

Ground set­tle­ment was tak­en into account in the cladding too: it was designed from the out­set to be adjustable, so that adjust­ing the frame does not dam­age the out­er sur­face. A fixed struc­ture would not have allowed the same. 

Hakkarainen con­sid­ers the out­come a suc­cess: “We are pleased with the result, it’s rather styl­ish!” He says users have found the upper floor par­tic­u­lar­ly good. 

Build­ing con­trol approved it with­out remarks 

The biggest doubt before­hand was not about the tech­nol­o­gy, but about how build­ing con­trol would view the project – and whether the sys­tem would be accept­ed as a per­ma­nent struc­ture. In the Helsin­ki met­ro­pol­i­tan area, the project went through a full build­ing per­mit process, which is fair­ly demand­ing. Since the struc­ture is not fixed, Herold sus­pects the per­mit process could be more straight­for­ward in some munic­i­pal­i­ties. 

Herold says ALFIX’s tech­ni­cal experts pro­vid­ed answers, cal­cu­la­tions and struc­tur­al dimen­sions for every ques­tion. “They raised hard­ly any ques­tions at build­ing con­trol – the answers were thor­ough and pro­fes­sion­al.” 

The struc­ture was tak­en into use at the begin­ning of June. “A zero-defect han­dover – build­ing con­trol had prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing to remark on,” Herold says with sat­is­fac­tion. 

Ser­vice life and main­te­nance of a per­ma­nent scaffolding struc­ture 

Scaffolding is typ­i­cal­ly used for tem­po­rary solu­tions, but in this project the struc­ture was built to stay. That rais­es the ques­tion of dura­bil­i­ty. 

Asked how durable a struc­ture like this real­ly is, Meier says: “Scaf­fold­ings are made for a long time to stay and actu­al­ly we expect the deliv­ered mate­r­i­al will give fun some decades. How­ev­er the cus­tomer should employ the scaffolding com­pa­ny one time a year to check all con­nec­tions. That needs just a cou­ple of hours but makes sense in my view.” 

A scaffolding solu­tion that scales to any size of need 

The same solu­tion can be built at a frac­tion of the size – and it is no more demand­ing tech­ni­cal­ly. Four bays work just as well as twen­ty-six. The dif­fer­ence is in the num­ber of parts, not the tech­nol­o­gy. 

“Regard­ing the tech­ni­cal view the length of the con­struc­tion does­n’t change any­thing for the sta­t­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions. So the mea­sure­ment of the con­struc­tion should be a deci­sion regard­ing the amount of club mem­bers. ALFIX gonna assist in every case. Does­n’t mat­ter if longer or short­er,” Meier promis­es. 

The eco­nom­ics sup­port the solu­tion too, and the point of com­par­i­son comes from an unex­pect­ed place: “Depend­ing on the ground con­di­tions, the foun­da­tion work alone could have cost more than this entire struc­ture,” Herold esti­mates. 

A prac­tice area also gen­er­ates income. At Tapi­o­la the bays are rent­ed out and occu­pan­cy has been high – which makes the invest­ment worth con­sid­er­ing for a small­er club as well. 

Hakkarainen rais­es anoth­er inter­est­ing angle on invest­ing in scaffolding: “If it turned out in the long run that the solu­tion does­n’t work for us, we could dis­man­tle the struc­ture and sell the scaffolding on. That isn’t pos­si­ble with oth­er struc­tures.” 

Four part­ners, a short deci­sion chain 

Tapi­o­la Golf placed the order, MaxBuild han­dled project man­age­ment, con­struc­tion work and cladding, Suo­mi Teline the scaffolding work and ALFIX deliv­ery, and ALFIX’s tech­ni­cal team the design and struc­tur­al cal­cu­la­tions. 

“The project was very straight­for­ward, because the deci­sion chain was so short. The club’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive worked close­ly with us on a dai­ly basis, and Suo­mi Teline had some­one involved through­out. Deci­sions were made very quick­ly,” Herold says. He adds that the same applied to changes dur­ing con­struc­tion, which are inevitable in a project like this: “ALFIX’s experts assessed how the changes affect­ed the cal­cu­la­tions and we got the answers very quick­ly. When you need a deci­sion today rather than tomor­row, it works.” 

Meier’s mes­sage to the project team sums up the char­ac­ter of the project and its out­come well: 

“I will say thanks to the end cus­tomer Tapi­o­la golf club for the trust, our part­ner Suo­mi Teline with Peter Korho­nen and the com­pa­ny MaxBuild with Kris­to Herold for the great col­lab­o­ra­tion which made the project to that suc­cess. Also thanks to our tech­ni­cal team at ALFIX which took care about plan­ning, sta­t­i­cal plan­ning and draw­ings as well.” 

How to get a sim­i­lar project start­ed 

Hakkarainen says the dri­ving range has attract­ed inter­est not only among golfers but also among oth­ers in the indus­try. We asked those involved what advice they would give to clubs con­sid­er­ing a sim­i­lar project. The fol­low­ing steps made the check­list: 

• Get the back­ground infor­ma­tion, ground data and needs assess­ment in order 
• Talk to your munic­i­pal­i­ty’s build­ing con­trol and to archi­tects 
• Set the objec­tives in writ­ing to make sure every­one involved shares the same under­stand­ing 
• Ask Suo­mi Teline for a pre­lim­i­nary cal­cu­la­tion to take to build­ing con­trol 

Anoth­er les­son from the project was that the scaffolding sys­tem itself goes up quick­ly – in this case in about five weeks. Most of the time went into the oth­er stages, such as the per­mit process. 

Scaffolding can do more than you would expect 

Per­ma­nent scaffolding struc­tures are rare world­wide. Meier recalls only a hand­ful, such as a seat­ed grand­stand in a foot­ball sta­di­um. For him, Tapi­o­la Golf’s dri­ving range is exact­ly the kind of project that shows what a scaffolding sys­tem can do. It proves in prac­tice an idea he believes in strong­ly: “I have been there at Espoo as the first plan­ning start­ed. I like this project so much and I love the final result! A per­fect sam­ple for my the­o­ry: every­thing is pos­si­ble with scaffolding mate­r­i­al.” 

Is your club fac­ing a renew­al of its bays or an expan­sion of its prac­tice area? Tell us what you need and we’ll work out togeth­er what size of solu­tion fits. 

Get in touch with Peter Korho­nen