Nell Bank Outdoor Centre

Work included a new build education centre with dormitories with 64 beds in total and an outdoor teaching centre for local schools and college under the YORbuild Framework.

The project needed to be completed right in the centre of a live environment regularly used by school children from 5 years of age.

The construction site had shared access routes, therefore lots of day to day coordination needed to happen with the centre team. Daily meetings, notice for deliveries and segregation was key, as well as controlled deliveries.

As expected, there was extensive wildlife within the site including bats and red crested newts. With a license in place, we needed to ensure we met requirements and supported the wildlife. With the help of an Ecologist, we ensured as much undisturbance to the newts and bats in the area during the build. We installed new bat boxes and put in place wildlife support where required.

Whilst work was being carried out, schooling continued in a live environment and children continued having lessons. We therefore felt it was beneficial to provide an explanation to the work going on, so through arrangement with the staff, we provided a presentation to the school children. In addition, staff at school received a monthly newsletter from us explaining activities and stages we were at. Staff were very much involved and appreciated us involving them.

In addition to involving the school, we arranged for a Keighley College student to work with us on site as an apprentice.

To meet environmental requirements, we used air source heat pumps and reused retained M&E equipment.

Valued engineering is a key expertise at Britcon and at the forefront of our mind throughout the life cycle of a project. For Nell Bank, we found by omitting the ceilings, this provided a savings and also gave a better visual solution with the exposed M&E; giving the perception of more space as well as a cost saving.

As well as the above we value engineered the scheme to bring it within the clients budget, making savings through many ways from changes to the spec without taking away from the design to savings on M&E equipment and design.