Bexhill Academy, New Detached Annex, East Sussex 2019

Construction of a 500m² Detached Two-Storey Teaching Block to a Live School in East Sussex

Description

Construction of an additional, free-standing two-storey school block to accommodate additional teaching space, together with practical skills-based learning areas and clerical resources in one self-contained building.

Key Challenges

• Minimising disruption: The school was occupied for much of the works, requiring us to operate with minimal impact to the school. Groundworks and contract lifts were scheduled during the summer holidays. Thereafter, unavoidably noisy works were scheduled out of hours and on weekends. We synchronised our break times with exam schedules to ensure works were not happening during exams. Another area of potential disruption was the busy car park. all deliveries and operations were planned to dovetail with the academy's normal operating procedures and timings to avoid clashes. Regular multidisciplinary team meetings between contractor disciplines and client representatives ensured that all working practices met with academy approval and, most importantly of all, health & safety guidelines were being followed.
  
  
• Completion on-time: The project represented a substantial quantity of works within a very small window. By utilising off-site pre-fabrication for the building structure, we could simply drop the building into place with a series of controlled contract lifts. This also allowed for manufacture of the building offsite to occur concurrently with the groundworks, reducing our impact on the academy from 10 months down to 7.
  
  

• Regular cost reports kept the client apprised of the financial position of the project, and extras were clearly costed and documented to ensure no overruns.

Bexhill Academy Photo Gallery