To cater for the growing demand for school places, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, located in the heart of Bishop’s Stortford, was increased from a 1.5 to a 2 form entry school. This transformative project saw the existing 1960’s school building demolished and a new, two-storey building being constructed on the site adjacent to the current school. Once the new school was built, the old school was decanted into the new and then demolished. The existing reception classrooms (separate buildings from the main school) were retained and developed into a nursery, providing a total of 480 pupil places including the nursery.

The St Joseph’s scheme was a BIM level two project. All equipment and service routes were modelled in 3D, as well as coordinated with each other and the building structure. Classrooms have been designed using Kier’s “K School” template, improving design efficiency and mixed mode ventilation has been used to reduce energy use through the utilisation of nighttime cooling of the building mass. Daylight dimming controls have been incorporated for the general lighting. The energy efficient designs consider the impacts of overheating, daylighting and Part L compliance through dynamic simulation modelling.

One of the main challenges of this project was the requirement for the school to remain operational during term time. The team overcame this by collaborating with all parties to ensure new services such as pipework and cabling are installed alongside the existing services. Under these plans, this allowed us to switch over to the new system either out of hours or during school holidays, with minimal disruption to daily school life for staff and students during term time.

St. Josephs is one of eight primary and secondary schools making up the St Francis of Assisi catholic Academy Trust in Hertfordshire and is part of the Diocese of Westminster.

Role:

Mechanical and Electrical Contractor

Client:

Essex County Council

Main Contractor:

Kier

M & E Consultant:

Rolton

Architect:

Fielden & Mawson

Value:

£1.0M

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