Bishop’s Stortford College

Bishop’s Stortford College

Construction - Education

Client: The Incorporated Bishop’s Stortford College Association

Location: Bishops Stortford

Value: £10.5m

Project duration: 77 weeks

What was our role?

Design and construction in a conversation area, which included the demolition of three existing extensions, structural alterations to the original building and construction of a new 2-storey extension.  The extension comprised a new two storey CLT building. The CLT structure sits on reinforced concrete ground slabs and ground beams with CFA piled foundations on a raft concrete slab. The CLT timber walls/upper floors/roof with external timber wall cladding and a mixture of tiled and green roofs.

Works included Girls Block of 36 rooms, accommodation for 45 students and 4 staff, plus six study areas, one Social space and one large sports changing room.  Boys Block – 34 rooms, accommodation for 46 Students, 4 Staff, with en-suite bedrooms, purpose made bespoke joinery for beds, wardrobes and desks.  Plus eleven study areas, one social space, and two large sports changing rooms.

During the enabling works extensive investigation planning and design was carried out so that appropriate access would be given to the very constrained site, which involved consultation with the local authority and employment of would an arboricultural consultant to retain as many large trees as possible, unfortunately some trees needed pollarding and some dead trees removed to allow safe access to the site and too avoid damage to trees.  At the completion of the project fifteen new mature trees were planted.  Other challenging aspects included investigation and consideration to nearby water courses, which had previously flooded part of the site with measures being put in place to negate potential future flooding and mitigate flood effects.

The building was adjacent to the original college buildings, which are Grade II Listed.

We worked extremely closely with the client’s Quantity Surveyor throughout the project to ensure that the client could be provided with all necessary cost forecast information for anticipated turnover costs, as it was essential that the works were completed within the client’s capped budget figure.

We assisted with the building up of the cost plan whilst preliminary enabling work / construction works were underway, allowing for a smooth transition to the main construction works to allow for occupations by students at the start of the school year.