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Case Study Streets ahead, & weeks ahead! Raymond Millar, Construction Director at The McAvoy Group, looks at the design and offsite construction of a new state-of-theart academy in Slough and how it was delivered weeks ahead of programme. Lynch Hill Enterprise Academy is a £20m education campus and one of the largest ever modular schools to be built in the UK. It demonstrates a number of new innovations which contributed to its early completion – an unprecedented 17 weeks ahead of programme, giving this new free school the benefit of even earlier occupation Lynch Hill is a 1,140-place academy specialising in science, technology, engineering and maths, and was built by principal contractor and offsite specialist The McAvoy Group, for the Learning Alliance Academy Trust. In recognition of its success, the project has already been shortlisted for five industry awards. Designed by Blue Sky Architects and funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), this three-storey 8,750m 2 building is an exemplar offsite education project which has a design inspired by the world-leading Harvard Business School. The design for Lynch Hill was initially developed for another site and then had to be adapted for a second and final brownfield site. The build programme had to accommodate extensive demolition works, asbestos removal, the adjacent construction of a new sports stadium, restricted access, and the school’s first intake of pupils who were located in temporary buildings also on the site. Construction had to be phased to allow early handover of the sports hall and changing facilities for use by the school. The design brief set out a number of important criteria, all within the ESFA’s available budget, which the project successfully met. • It had to facilitate the exchange of knowledge with business and encourage a sense of enterprise among students, thereby helping to bridge the skills gap for local companies. • It had to create an environment for collaborative learning and mentoring, and provide good visibility as part of the school’s anti-bullying strategy. • It had to have excellent acoustic performance. • Community access was required to the sports facilities. The school is designed around four large multi-functional central spaces which help to maximise natural light and encourage interaction and collaborative learning. The use of inspirational messages and bold colours throughout reflects the academy’s ethos of enterprise, aspiration and achievement. The building features an impressive fullheight glazed entrance, a striking timber colonnade with brise soleil sunshading, and a palette of materials which includes render and timbereffect rainscreen cladding to harmonise the scheme in its semi-rural location. Offsite construction was used for the curriculum wing. Facilities include science laboratories, ICT suite, SEN hub, studios for music, drama and art, areas for informal learning, sixth form study and social space, kitchen and café. An enterprise exchange runs through the core of the building on two levels to facilitate collaboration with local businesses. There is a four-court sports hall and a main hall with retractable seating which were constructed using a fast-track steel system. The sports hall can be separated and secured from the rest of the school out of hours. Externally there is a landscaped area and social space which form a large arrival plaza at the front of the school. This creates a sense of place and identity for the academy and encourages informal gatherings with its planting and seating. There are outdoor teaching spaces, a soft landscaped study garden, social area, multi-use games areas, and a sports pitch. FACT FILE: Client: Learning Alliance Academy Trust/Education and Skills Funding Agency Facility: 1,140-place academy Building size: 8,750m2 Location: Slough Value: £20m Weeks on site: 53 weeks Partners: Blue Sky Architects 28
Lynch Hill demonstrates a number of technical advancements in offsite construction. Larger 15.6m long modules and a new lifting system were specially engineered by McAvoy for the project which reduced time, transport and installation costs and further improved construction efficiency. Some of the steel-framed modules were preclad offsite in the factory to further reduce time on site. The use of a McAvoy offsite solution also removed the need for storage of large volumes of building materials on the site, helping to address the issue of restricted access. Around 65% of the building’s construction was completed offsite. 146 modules were installed with doors, windows, ironmongery, internal walls, plumbing, electrics and joinery already in place. This approach reduced the build programme to just 53 weeks. The build programme was around six months less compared to site-based construction for a school of this scale. BIM was invaluable for the Lynch Hill project, allowing design plans to be reviewed for clash detection of services with the modular structure. This helped to ensure seamless construction and removed the need for additional site works. BIM allows processes to be streamlined to help deliver better decision making at the earliest possible stages in the life of a project. Going forward, the increased use of BIM will deliver shorter design periods, giving schools the benefit of reduced risk and even earlier occupation. It also allows all of the necessary technical data for the building assets to be embedded into models. This enables the estates team to have all information needed for maintenance available in the best possible way. Since the inception of Lynch Hill, McAvoy now offers virtual reality technology which is particularly valuable for education schemes to enhance stakeholder collaboration. Teaching staff can now be ‘put into’ a virtual building and have the opportunity to ‘walk around’ the building at the earliest design stage to feel and experience its functionality, assess usability, circulation, layouts and adjacencies. This is hugely beneficial for stakeholder engagement, further streamlining the design process, and facilitating more informed decision making. Time and cost overruns on both public and private sector building projects are still unacceptably high. By contrast - and as Lynch Hill successfully demonstrates - offsite construction can significantly reduce risk with much greater assurance of delivery on time and on budget. Lynch Hill takes the use of offsite for secondary schools to a new level and has exceeded this academy’s expectations for speed, quality and design. www.mcavoygroup.com 29
Page 1: Winter 2O18 issue 4152 School build
Page 4 and 5: Editor’s Article Go west… Tyron
Page 6 and 7: Article A new era for electric heat
Page 8 and 9: Heating, Ventilation & Energy Use s
Page 10 and 11: Heating, Ventilation & Energy White
Page 12 and 13: Heating, Ventilation & Energy Syste
Page 14 and 15: Modular Buildings Learning environm
Page 16 and 17: Editor’s Article School report ha
Page 18 and 19: Interior Design & Fit Out On the bu
Page 20 and 21: Interior Design & Fit Out UCL choos
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Page 24 and 25: Product News GEZE UK gets top marks
Page 26 and 27: Kitchens & Washrooms ‘World-class
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