Student Village at University of Staffordshire
Energy efficient, purpose built student accommodation and a net-zero student hub
The university sector is highly competitive, and our we help our customers create exceptional facilities using our award winning experience of working in live campus environments.
We are one of the UK's best track-records for enhancing university estates. Our £300 million workload includes creating a ‘living-green wall’ for Teesside University, building and extending Birmingham City University’s Curzon building, creating Bournemouth University’s new flagship ‘Fusion’ building and Leicester University’s Passivhaus certified Centre for Medicine.
Universities investing in growth
Investment is considered essential to attract research funding, lure the best students and help secure an elevated position in league tables. More than a third of students say that when considering where to study they reject institutions because of the poor quality of buildings, facilities and the physical environment, according to new research by the Association of University Directors of Estates.
We're helping universities respond with new space that enhances students’ experience and wellbeing. Provision includes attractive outdoor parks, gardens and squares, and the creation of indoor ‘student hubs’, which combine social learning spaces with café-filled atria.
One of example is a student hub being delivered at the University of Greenwich, which involves refurbishing the grade two listed Dreadnought Building, dating back to the 1700s, on Greenwich’s World Heritage Site. We also delivered Coventry University’s first and second campus away from Coventry, in Scarborough and Dagenham, plus the the flagship Student Centre and Fusion buildings at the University of Bournemouth.
Shared space
The second big trend that continues to emerge is the drive to make more efficient use of university estates – which often means developing shared lecture theatres and teaching spaces across a number of faculties. This makes better use of the facility but also fosters collaboration.
Improving the wellbeing of students and staff has also become a higher priority across universities, and again, the estate is being developed to refl ect this trend. The greater onus on better mental and physical health is manifesting itself with investment in landscaping and outdoor pavilions and state-of-the-art sports centres. Our expertise is being harnessed on projects with these priorities, such as an outstanding new sports centre at the University of Warwick.
Sibson campus at University of Kent
We understand the sensitivities of delivering projects while university staff and students are on campus, thanks to our expertise at working in live environments.
Our sustainability and low carbon knowledge means we can construct energy efficient buildings with greatly reduced whole life costs. Many of our projects achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating and we are delivering the UK's biggest Passivhaus facility for Leicester University.
We deliver a mixture of refurbishment and new-build projects, or we can deliver smaller programmes of repairs and maintenance. We work through single or two stage tender, or on long-term frameworks.