Feature Free schools Eden school photos: Daniel Jarvis

Above: Trees felled during work to build Eden Primary School were reused as seating outside. Top/middle right: classrooms are spacious Below right: sustainable features include PV panels

thinking hard about what the schools really want and it’s forcing all of us to think differently. You don’t get grand entrances and foyers — there’s an emphasis on simple teaching spaces,” says Janie Chesterton, education director at Willmott Dixon. “The standard classroom size is 56 square metres, but some head teachers are saying, no, we’ll take 50 square metres and trade it off against something else.” And contractors are being challenged

to take on unpromising sites. “The fact that we’re building [Woodpecker Hall in Enfield] is great — the community gets a new school, on a site that might not have been considered possible and the local authority wouldn’t have considered,” says Richard Topliss, contracts manager at Leadbitter. Leadbitter, Willmott Dixon and 13

others make up the Education Funding Agency’s Contractor Framework, which

has delivered most of the free schools completed so far. Capital budgets are set according to the needs of the site, but at an average of £1,800 per m2

,

budgets are in line with the latest wave of new academies and the Priority Schools Building programme. The process starts with faith groups,

parent-led promoters and not-for-profit educational groups applying to the Department for Education for funding. Once green-lighted, applicants receive a grant to develop their educational strategy, hire staff and market themselves to parents — EC Harris and Mott McDonald are two of 12 firms on the EFA framework for this project management role. In addition, groups can use part of their grant to pay for construction management advice. But on the actual construction, the EFA acts as overall client, negotiating on sites, appointing the contractor and running the projects.

CONSTRUCTION MANAGER | SEPTEMBER 2012 | 21 p20-24 CMSEPT_freeschools.indd 21 29/08/2012 17:04

“ We’ve been thinking hard about what the schools really want and it’s forcing all of us to think differently.” Janie Chesterton, Willmott Dixon