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
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.
Images – Nick Kane Photographer
Iffley Academy Oxford
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)
Images – Tim Crocker
Beech Court, Abingdon School
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 Free School
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.
Images supplied by Jestico + Whiles / Fotohaus
New Swimming Pool Complex, St George’s Independent Boarding & Day School
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.
Low energy, building with highly insulated fabric
Overheating modelling and analysis to avoid comfort cooling requirement
The team also provided BREEAM assessment services to meet the target of ‘Very Good’.
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.
State of Art high efficiency heat recovery pool plant with fully automatic energy saving operation
Highly efficient Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery (MVHR) in wet and dry changing areas
Pool filtration including UV protection to minimise chlorine use
BMS Controls system with run status and energy monitoring
Low energy lighting throughout
Successful commissioning, handover and operation
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.
Shiplake College is an Independent boarding/day school located on a 45 acre beautifully landscaped site, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. The College pride themselves on their strong rowing community and have produced no less than four Olympic medal winners.
The existing Boathouse consisted of various wooden sheds, each being used to house different types equipment and the boats themselves. The New Boathouse has been constructed as a two storey building, using a mixture of bricks and metal sheets as materials. The Ground floor has been designed to have enough space for a workshop, state of the art multi-purpose fitness and conditioning gym, bar and changing rooms in addition to Boat Storage. The first floor also has a rifle and archery shooting range, an indoor climbing wall and equipment storage for outdoor pursuits for the popular Duke of Edinburgh award scheme.
The Boathouse is an exemplar of the minimalist approach to renewable services design, employing a ground source heat pump using boreholes due to the size of the site and internal fan coil units for proving space cooling and heating. Insulation levels exceed building regulations to minimise the required GSHP installation size. The ventilation employs an MVHR heat recovery system using CO2 and PIR sensors for occupancy demand ventilation varying the flowrate according to usage. The scheme also makes use of opening rooflights for natural ventilation under suitable conditions. Lighting employs LEDs through to round out the complete low energy services installation.
The project will involve the construction of the new Wyre Forest Special School and 16 bed residential unit, together with a new science block for Baxter College and new classrooms for St John’s Primary School.
The shared vision of all three schools on the site is to develop opportunities for increasing integration, which could involve the shared use of buildings and facilities. For this reason, it is anticipated that the new Special School will be built close to the Baxter College buildings, and it is important that the construction work should be completed with minimal disruption to the school.
The existing site slopes, and has been graded to provide a series of separate terraces. It is possible that the new Special School may occupy more than one of these terraces, and may include a split section to accommodate the changes in level. Some of the accommodation will be at first floor level, and all areas will be fully accessible. There may be some additional terracing of the external works to provide level and secure outdoor areas.
It is proposed that the new buildings will mark the next stage in WCC’s policy of environmentally sustainable design, by setting new standards of performance and energy efficiency. It is proposed that the school could be designed to achieve excellent thermal performance and airtightness, and construction processes will involve a high percentage of recycled content.
Dorothy Goodman Special Needs School
The new building features 9 classroom spaces, a studio hall, sensory and multi sensory spaces, main hall, music therapy, a sensory courtyard and outdoor amphitheatre.
The building design has created a sensitive, purposeful and stimulating learning environment which meets the needs of pupils, from 11-16 years, with a whole spectrum of learning difficulties.
The design uses innovative features such as oversized, textured roof lights to create distraction teaching tools. All of the classrooms face South, with solar shading, to capture the beautiful meadow panorama, bringing the outside into the teaching spaces. The building is defined by separate materials, textures and colours to identify different use of spaces.
The school are committed to teaching children and young people with a wide range of learning needs including those with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties, Severe Learning difficulties, Moderate Difficulties and those with Autism (including those who may be functioning at high levels academically). The landscaping and lighting design allows for the protection of existing bat species found on the site. The spaces include; Sensory and multi-sensory suites, Therapy suite, Illuminated sensory garden, Main hall and studio with folding screen to open into a single space, Community use hall and meeting rooms, All classrooms with passive ventilation, wide corridors and easy-mapping circulation and Specialist, dedicated areas for art, science, food technology and DT.
Images supplied by Ben Davis, Photographer
Winner – The ProCon Leicestershire Awards 2019
Winner – RICS East Midlands Social Impact Awards 2020
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