Feature Free schools

Frome Steiner Academy CORSLEY Construction Value: £5-6M Contractor: Kier Project Manager & Cost Consultant: Turner and Townsend

Frome’s former Edwardian hospital is to be transformed into the Steiner Academy

What’s on the curriculum? Austrian Rudolf Steiner opened his first school in Stuttgart in 1919, with an ethos of teaching in ways that worked in harmony with the

different phases of a child’s development. It concentrates on the joy of the learning experience rather than academic hot-housing. The Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship maintains these principles, taking account of their academic, physical, emotional and spiritual needs in a pluralistic educational approach.

How was it built? The Frome Steiner Academy

will be sited in temporary accommodation in the village of Corsley from September this year, while its new permanent home is created. This will be in Frome’s imposing former Edwardian NHS Estate Victoria Hospital, also using its adjacent 1970s Medical Centre and a 1980s residential care home. Under the Free Schools

Framework, main contractor Kier bid for the refurb project with its architect Feilden Clegg Bradley overseeing the design. Enabling works are due

to start January 2013, with an anticipated 12-month construction programme. All the signs are that Kier

will have its work cut out. Client consultant, architect John Renshaw, who advises the Steiner Waldorf Fellowship on all its school designs, says Kier’s budgets were agreed two years ago — putting the cost of the refurbishment at little more than £1,000/ m2

, making its margins very tight.

Kings Science Academy LIDGET GREEN, BRADFORD Construction Value: £8.9M Contractor: BAM, working with architect Bond Bryan

What’s on the curriculum? The Academy is an 800-pupil school that aims to regenerate the deprived Lidget Green area of Bradford. Its aspiration is to create first-class education opportunities particularly for lower income and ethnic minority families, and will specialise in science and English.

How was it built? The design features teaching spaces either side of a central circulation route, and meets the BB98 Accommodation Schedule. The only exception are the higher spec “superlabs”, reflecting the school’s science bias. Of traditional

construction, the school is steel framed, with in-situ concrete floors and masonry/composite cladding

Suitable sites Many free schools in urban areas have struggled to find suitable sites, forcing project teams to come up with innovative temporary or phased solutions. According to Allanach, the DfE has now improved the application process to reflect this — accelerating the education assessment so that the promoters have more time to devote to finding the right site. But EC Harris floats an interesting

proposition. “The model has been that the site would be acquired by the local authority or the government, then grant- funded. But we think the schools could lease it from developers who could fit it out on a 20-year lease — it would be good value for the public purse. There’s a large volume of unlet commercial space, much of it in urban areas where there’s a need for school places.” EC Harris is currently discussing the idea with the EFA. But whatever the solution, free schools

panels to external walls. BAM Construction

delivered the first phase of the building in just 29 weeks of a 53-week programme, sufficient to house the academy’s first two-year groups. This obviated the need for any temporary accommodation,

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allowing the savings to be invested in the permanent building. The structural frames

of two former warehouses on the site have been retained and will be converted into the sports hall and assembly/ refectory spaces.

Kings Science Academy is steel framed, with in-situ concrete floors and masonry/composite cladding panels to external walls

are here to stay and present a significant workstream, albeit one ringed with challenges. “We’re already seeing a lot of technically challenging and interesting conversions, I think we’ll see a wider and wider range of buildings used,” comments Allanach at EC Harris, who also predicts the wider option of standardised system building in the sector. CM

with contractors on bids and cost management. He points out that free schools — often low-value complex refurbishments — offer little budgetary room for “abnormals” and surprises, and more scope for slip-ups and over-runs. “Some contractors will struggle to make them stack up financially, or get them through their internal governance procedures. Sub £5m, contractors have to look at them very carefully,” he says. At EC Harris, partner and education

account leader Louise Allanach agrees. “For designers and contractors these refurbs are more risky, with new-build you can accept risk at low funding levels, but with refurb it’s more of an unknown.” As an example of what can go wrong,

Talbot cites the case of the Ark Conway primary in Hammersmith and Fulham, where the first site was abandoned, the next plan to convert a Grade II listed library was complicated by finding underground services beneath the planned new build, and the school opened last September in temporary buildings.