St Andrew's Lower School East, Biggleswade

St. Andrew’s Lower School East is another example of how our innovation and knowledge is making a real difference to the ability of local authorities to provide services for their local community.

See stunning time-lapse of the school built in 2 minutes!

Central Bedfordshire Council needed a new school urgently to cope with a huge demand for places. It had to be delivered within 18 months and be a quality option that would last many generations.

Given our previous track-record with the council for quality, they turned to our Sunesis concept. Sunesis is our fast-track standardised design concept developed with Scape that has been used 25 times since 2011 to create 9,000 school places and save the public purse over £10 million.

Ready-made solution

After reviewing what option was right, the council opted for a Sunesis Paxton model to create St. Andrew’s Lower School East in Biggleswade.

The Paxton design – one of several in the Sunesis range – has been tried and tested on other projects, and creates an environment that is flexible and sustainable. It also meets the latest government BB103 area requirements for schools.

It is also Energy rated A and comes with a host of features to boost energy efficiency. It's a really nice environment to teach and learn!

Fast turnaround

Our team got involved with pre-construction in April 2014 where we worked with the council to ensure the school met its need to provide the additional school places. Being Scape, the procurement and pre-construction period was brief, saving time and money and making best use of council resources, and our construction team were on site by August.

Using Sunesis, the pre-designed school, meant the construction process was quick, with our team completing the project in late June 2015. They gave amble time for the handover and to ensure that teaching staff were settled ready for the first intake in September.

The new St. Andrew’s Lower School East provides 1,567 square metres of teaching space for an additional 300 pupils from September 2015.

Community

As part of the project, our teams gave talks to all schoolchildren about construction projects, and providing tours of the site for local pupils to show them how we build a school into school they can remember as the best days of their life!

Want to know more, speak to Tim Carey.

Check out timelapse of another Sunesis school being built