SCHOOLS & EDUCATION FACILITIES SUPPLEMENT STANDARDISED DESIGN


‘Avoiding bespoke and special elements is the key to avoiding costs. The rise of building information modelling will also reduce costs in the longer term’


health and energy efficiency will take a back seat in the rush to build cheaply and quickly? ‘The standards contained in the Building


Bulletin guides for schools are minimum design standards and we should be doing better,’ says Swain-Smith. ‘Yet, it all’s about cost, programme and standardisation now. In terms of sustainability in schools, nobody has mentioned zero carbon to me in the last year.’ Others are equally concerned. ‘There is


of course much that can be done to reduce cost through procurement and design,


Case study Pod approach cuts costs of new build


but we must ensure that “fit for purpose” buildings are adaptable, comfortable all year round, have low energy use and do not revert to the tin sheds with narrow corridors and insufficient ventilation which have given such problems once occupied,’ says Mike Entwisle, education sector director at Buro Happold. While the James Review aims to address


the issue of poor energy performance after handover, work has been carried out in this area for many years. ‘Post-occupancy studies have long shown that often schools don’t perform as expected,’ says Gordon Hudson, divisional director at Mott MacDonald and Professor of Sustainable Building at Northumbria University. ‘Research has indicated that a significant number of briefs for new and refurbished schools are potentially conflicting, and resolution of these contradictions usually occurs too late in the design period for an informed decision to be made – for example, the derogation of acoustic criteria due to the use of opening windows for natural ventilation purposes,’ says Hudson. The CIBSE School Design Group (SDG)


A consortium led by contractor Interserve, and including consultancy Arup, is claiming to reduce the cost and time of school construction by more than 30%. Interserve believes PodSolve is the answer to providing more for less, and has applied the solution at a Yorkshire school. The shape and layout of the


Leeds East Academy aims to remove the traditional school corridor and regimented classroom approach. This is replaced with the creation of flexible pods (pictured) which can be moved, added or removed in five days per pod, to cater for changing school requirements, according to Interserve. PodSolve comprises a series


of steel-framed rooms or classrooms that can be laid out within the overall building shell to create a fully flexible school environment. The original estimate for Leeds East Academy in June


22 CIBSE Journal March 2012


2010 was £19m. Following the programme revisions the budget was reduced to £14m; the PodSolve solution will cost £13.65m. Arup has devised the building services concept specifically to reduce difficulty with co-ordination, to simplify connections to classrooms and to provide significant flexibility. ‘The aim is to deliver a significantly improved internal environment in the pods by providing a fully mechanically ventilated solution to the main building envelope, while maintaining flexibility by using natural ventilation techniques,’ says Dan Goodreid, director at Arup. A key element of this is the development of an acoustically treated air path to draw air from the main building into the classrooms at low level and then, using natural buoyancy- driven ventilation principles, release the extract air back into the main building (via another


acoustically treated path) where it will stratify at high level and be extracted from the space after recovering useful heat to pre-heat the supply air. The design is for a well-


daylit main atrium but with optimised glazing/shading solutions to avoid excessive summer solar gain. The building’s heating


and hot water systems are supplied by a combined heat and power plant (approx 45 kWe combined capacity) and a roof-mounted photovoltaic array (up to 90 sq m, 50 kW peak). Other features include automatic building energy management and lighting control systems, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. The flexible building


style allows for sections of the school to be separated from others, opening up the possibility of allowing the local community also to benefit from the facilities.


is writing a technical memorandum (TM) that will deal with integrated design solutions, which take account of all of the single-issue Building Bulletins and the conflicts between them. ‘Design solutions that address single issues can compromise other factors in the performance of the school. Hence, the aim is to present a holistic design approach that overcomes these conflicts and responds to changing requirements in school design,’ says John Palmer, a regional director at AECOM and chairman of CIBSE SDG. The guide will also emphasise the


importance of the actual performance in use that arises from the design’s intent. Often the design as conceived does not deliver the performance anticipated. The reasons for this can be many and various, but particularly important issues are the requirements of the occupants, and their abilities to operate and maintain the school and its services. CIBSE’s new TM should point members


in the right direction. ‘The clear intention is to learn from experience and provide these lessons to the CIBSE membership,’ says Palmer. ‘If we now turn to a more measured rate of design and construction, and possibly less complex and bureaucratic procedures, together with better design understanding, we will produce schools that are truly suitable for the future.’ CJ


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