Engineering Services for Buildings

New Head Office for NIAB in Cambridge

Continuing our relationship with SDC and NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Botany) in Cambridge, we are delighted to have been awarded the mechanical and electrical package for the new NIAB Bingham head office site off Huntington Road. The existing site pulls together three existing buildings that will be refurbished into working office and laboratories. The three buildings will then be linked together with a new double height, glazed entrance and meeting area. The final part of the scheme is a new build basement and three floors of laboratory at the rear of the site in conjunction with The University of Cambridge and NIAB. We are proud to be playing a part in the NIAB development – this will be our third major SDC/NIAB project. Recently, we completed  “Barn 2” on their Park Farm site in Histon and we are currently advancing  “Barn 1”, which again provide laboratories, seed handling, storage and office space.

Following food shortages during the First World War, NIAB was established as a charitable trust in 1919 under the motto ‘Better Seeds: Better Crops’. NIAB recognised the importance of seed quality and its link to crop yields and safeguarding food supplies. The Institute went on to pioneer the development of many of the seed and variety evaluation processes, which still provide the foundation for successful, sustainable crop production both in the UK and abroad. Today food security is again high on the agenda, fuelled by concerns over population growth and climate change. The UN predicts that we need to produce 50% more food by 2030, and once again, the world is turning to plant genetic resources for solutions. The NIAB Trust works to promote agriculture, horticulture and arboriculture anywhere in the world by charitable means. With an expanding crop research programme and extensive experience in seed and variety evaluation, NIAB is working hard to help address the urgent global need to produce more food with a reduced impact on the environment.

NIAB Bingham proposed HO