Education
Structural engineering for education buildings: schools, nurseries, university and laboratory buildings, new build and refurbishment in the holiday windows.
Schools, nurseries, university buildings. Almost always in phases and almost always in the holidays.
What we take on
- Structural design for new build, extension and added storeys
- Refurbishment in existing buildings, hazardous material and capacity assessment
- Verification for laboratory, specialist room and lecture theatre loads
- Acoustic and fire performance verification, detailed design
The holidays are the programme
Six weeks in summer, two at Christmas. What fits into that window determines the construction: precast instead of in-situ, pre-assembly instead of site welding, dry build-ups instead of wet screed. We plan backwards from the available window and say early what phase size is realistic.
Schools in the existing stock
Many school buildings from the seventies contain asbestos or other hazardous materials in layers close to the structure. That changes sequence, cost and duration. We put the hazardous material survey before the intervention – not the other way round.
Acoustics
Classrooms and dining halls live or die by their room acoustics, and reverberation time is a question of surfaces fixed early. See room acoustics.