A new Early Year’s School sited on the Kingsmere Housing Development to the south west of Bicester.
The school is part of the second phase of the development and is being built in conjunction with a Primary School constructed during the initial phase. The project will offer a bright, enjoyable learning environment, net-zero in operation school from Nursery to Year 2 with the building being designed to the DfE guidelines.
Haberdashers Aske School for Boys provides education for ages 4 up to 18 at its site in Hertfordshire. Originally dating from the 17th Century, the school has evolved over time, now occupying a large parkland campus. The successful pre-prep school was formerly located off site, and this project was conceived to provide a dedicated new home for it within the central campus. The historic setting of the site and proximity to open countryside and an airfield meant Planning was especially challenging to secure.
The project was for the design and construction of a single story pre-prep school, comprising of classrooms, an assembly hall and external landscaping. The School’s aspiration was the development of a very low energy building providing a high level of occupant comfort with the use of sustainable materials.
A fabric first approach was adopted to optimise daylighting whilst controlling solar gain. This included installing high levels of insulation and stipulating an airtight construction, to reduce heat loss through external fabric whilst optimising a ventilation strategy providing greater indoor air quality with heat recovery. The principal structure was formed in a CLT construction, requiring a high degree of services coordination to pre-form builders-work holes for off-site manufacturing. External lighting and services were carefully planned to comply with Planning conditions. A large new car park equipped with Electric Vehicle chargers was built at the north of the site.
The resulting project delivers a bright and welcoming space, transforming the pre-prep offering for the school in its new home.
Photography by Andy Stagg
CBG Consultants were employed by Bloxham School to complete a mechanical, electrical & sustainable technical design, involving producing service solutions for a new student accommodation block in the heart of Bloxham. The scheme involved linking the new build to the existing Stonehill House which is property of Bloxham private school.
The new building consisted of dormitories, amenities, and communal space for the students to gather.
Photography by Andy Marshall – Fotofacade, Ancathus Clews Architects
Construction of a new extension to the existing school and remodeling of existing classrooms to provide new facilities. The extension was to replace the mobile classrooms at the rear of the school to provide permanent accommodation. The extension includes three key stage 2 classrooms, staffroom, and associated support and teaching spaces. Outside includes new hard and soft landscaping works, play area, and additional car parking. The project aims to help meet increasing demand in the local area for school spaces.
CBG Consultants worked closely with the architect during feasibility stage to assess various schemes for the extension and remodeling to arrive at a preferred option. A report was issued following a site survey for the M&E services to make sure all the equipment and services complied with building regulations and standards. Areas of non-compliance were highlighted and was addressed as part of the overall scheme. A BRUKL document was compiled as per the Part L building regulations to assess energy performance and carbon emissions for the project. This is to make sure that the building complies with sustainability targets set out by the England Building Regulations Part L 2013.
St Paul’s Cathedral School is a co-educational preparatory school for boys and girls aged 4 to 13 and a residential choir school for the boy choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral.
The school identified a need to increase capacity and improve its facilities to its pupils. The project included building a new boarding house, which was to provide accommodation to reflect current regulations, with the desire to exceed the expectations and to secure the culturally significant English Choral tradition for future generations. The accommodation, running over two floors, includes 36 beds, common rooms currently configured as a games room and cinema room, bathrooms, plus ample quiet social spaces. The building also included residential staff accommodation, more classrooms, ICT suite, an enlarged and refitted dining hall and kitchen and bespoke play equipment.
CBG Consultants was appointed to provide M&E design and sustainable consultancy services for the project. The CLT extension provided a good opportunity to reduce energy costs through high insulation and low infiltration rates inherent with the timber panel building system. The building was modelled to test overheating and the detailed design incorporated feedback from the modelling including optimising glazing selection and variable ventilation rates within the spaces to mitigate both occupancy numbers and summer overheating.
The boarding house design faced the problem of requiring adequate fresh air, avoiding overheating, and keeping out road noise and pollutants whilst being connected to a Grade 1 listed building. Large air conditioning plant was ruled out in favour of opening windows supported by discreet ventilation units, co-ordinated into the building design.
The design team recognised the location significance and the planning conditions concerning internal air quality. Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery Units (MVHR) were provided locally for each boarding room and communal spaces, running at continuous low speed operation with boost triggered by air quality sensing. Final filtration included NO2, PM2.5 and PM10 modules.
The Iffley Academy is a community Special Academy for 135 students up to the age of 18 with complex special educational needs, primarily Cognition and Learning Difficulties, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and/or Social, Emotional and Mental Health difficulties.
Responding to the needs of this Ofsted Outstanding school, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) is financing a £9 million replacement 3050m² building for the students, which will include designated spaces for vocational and life skills training which currently take place off site.
Efficient mechanical and electrical services are being provided that respond to the local NRIA Energy policy and ESFA (FOS) guidelines for specialist SEN schools (BB104).
Crosfields School is a leading co-educational independent day preparatory school for children aged 3-16 years, set in 40 acres of grounds on the outskirts of Reading.
CBG Consultants were engaged by the school to design an energy efficient Senior School Building that includes a Café, Performance Space, Teaching classrooms, Library, Welfare Hub, Academic resources as well as providing a welcoming main entrance hub for the School. The building is set to provide spaces for elder students who are developing their learning for their GCSEs.
Working with David Miller Architects we provided the M&E, Lighting, Building physics, BIM aspects & RIBA Stage 4C design information for the project.
The building is built with a cross-laminated timber structure which has also been embodied throughout the building with feature cross-laminated timber walls within the classrooms. Sustainable solutions including a brise soleil façade to help reduce overheating during the summer months and 47m2 of photovoltaic panes on the roof to generate electricity were provided.
The building is set to meet BREEAM ‘Very Good’.
To hear Rob Butt talk about Crosfields please click the audio files below:
Winner – British Construction Industry Awards 2022 – Social Infrastructure Project of the Year
Winner – Offsite Awards 2022 – Education Project of the Year
Winner – Constructing Excellence SECBE Awards 2022 – Building Project of the Year (Under £10m)
Shortlisted – The Structural Timber Awards 2022 – Education Project of the Year
Shortlisted – Construction News Awards 2022 – Project of the Year (Under £20m)
Abingdon School is a leading independent day and boarding school for boys set within an impressive parkland campus, featuring historic buildings and landscape. The school is one of the oldest in England, with references dating back as far as 1100.
CBG Consultants were engaged by the school to design an energy efficient new faculty building that includes a new Sixth Form Centre, Art & Design Department with ceramics and textile workshops, Teaching classrooms, Library and Academic resources. The building has improved the School’s ability to host events and assist with their numerous community outreach activities.
The client’s brief was to design an excellent, modern yet aesthetically sympathetic facility that maximises the internal usable space providing an opportunity to create a building that echoes the quality and breadth of Abingdon School education, marrying tradition with a modern outlook in a building that fits comfortably into its unique site.
The building delivered a highly efficient M&E services installation, with simple user controls. The lighting design was developed to maximise use of daylight in the studio areas, with high quality artificial light to supplement it. Within the library spaces, task lighting supplements lighting at desks, with general space lighting and other services integrated with the acoustic timber ceiling. Ventilation systems were designed to optimise air quality with energy performance, with specialist systems installed to process areas.
Grove Academy is the first all-through school to open in Slough, providing education to pupils from the age of 4 to 18.
The school opened on a temporary site in September 2017, while brand-new facilities are constructed. The school will grow each year, eventually supporting 4 form entry for primary age and 6 forms at secondary age, with a capacity for 1,940 pupils. The site includes a community hub, providing meeting spaces, offices and other community facilities.
CBG Consultants are pleased to support Wates in the delivery of this ambitious scheme, providing four storeys of high quality educational facilities, to the exacting ESFA requirements. The scheme is being fully designed to BIM Level 2, with CBG providing detailed design information and coordination of M&E services up to RIBA Stage 4C.
Detailed dynamic thermal modelling of the building fabric and façade has been undertaken by CBG, to validate the energy and mechanical servicing strategy. Localised Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR) is being provided to each classroom, delivering high thermal energy efficiency and guaranteeing enough fresh air is provided at all times of year. The system includes an automatic boost mode, reducing summertime overheating risk, and purging high CO2 levels.
Other sustainability features include 340m2 of photovoltaic panels on the roof to generate electricity, and electric vehicle charging points located around the site.
Following the opening of the new library and languages centre in 2015, St George’s continued their development plans and we were delighted to be involved with the new Swimming Pool complex commencing in 2018 and opened in the summer of 2019.
Working closely with the Architect, Edgington Spink + Hyne, our Sustainability team worked to optimise fabric first and modelled the building to maximise energy gain whilst avoiding overheating. Dynamic thermal modelling was used as part of our team’s input into the building elements selected. Additional opening windows and window treatment in key areas avoided the requirement for comfort cooling.
M&E services were selected based on proven quality and track record as well as efficiency. Plant was carefully located and to ensure access for maintenance and future replacement. We also undertook investigations into the capacity of the incoming gas, water and electricity supplies.
CBG provided a fully co-ordinated, detailed specification and drawings to ensure the tender documents were unambiguous to permit maximum competition in the tender process.
Images: © Edgington Spink + Hyne