Project Value – SRIF 2: £4,500,000, SRIF 3 Phase 1: £4,000,000,
SRIF 3 Phase 2: £2,000,000
Completed – August 2009
Description
This project was split over a number of contracts involving the multi-school refurbishment of the Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Psychology and Agri-food and Land Use. Each department has their own individual requirements, from the incorporation of the latest innovations in presentation and lecturing technology to the creation of Labs with specialised fume cupboards and laminar flow safety cabinets, to providing modern office facilities. The complexity created by having so many users in the same building needs an innovative, user-conscious and systematic approach to design, ensuring the result became a co-ordinated, structured solution suitable for all Departments. Strict controls over shutdowns and communication between all parties was vital to the success of the project as much of the building remained occupied during refurbishment, with Research at both under and post graduate level on-going.
The design approach for the project was based on meeting the users requirement but also ensuring that designs were fully energy efficient.
During the design process options were assessed for biomass boiler installations for the research laboratories however, the final design solution incorporated an ECON system to the fume cupboards and invertor control to all fans to minimise energy usage. This has proved very successful.
The Electrical Services design for the projects also incorporated modern energy efficient lighting installation and further lighting controls were introduced in further contracts to reduce energy wastage.