Case Studies
St Joseph's Catholic Primary School
To cater to 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 school building demolished and a new, two-storey building being constructed on the site adjacent to the current school.
In support of these works, Rolton Group was appointed by Kier Construction to provide mechanical and electrical performance design services to construct the new build school.
Once the new school was built, the old school was decanted into the new and then demolished. Existing incoming services needed to be diverted to maintain supply to the old school while the new building was under construction. The existing reception classrooms (separate buildings from the main school) were retained and will be let as a nursery. These buildings are currently interlinked with the main school in terms of LV power, water, gas and security and fire systems. These systems will need to be divorced and refed to service both the new and retained buildings.
The St Joseph’s scheme was a BIM level two project designed to RIBA Stage 3. All equipment and service routes were modelled in 3D, as well as coordinated with each other and the building structure. The Rolton Group team also incorporated a shared project document numbering system in keeping with PAS 1192. Classrooms have been designed using Kier’s “K School” template, improving design efficiency and mixed mode ventilation has been specified to reduce energy use through the utilisation of nighttime cooling of the building mass. Daylight dimming controls have been specified for the general lighting.
Rolton Group’s engineers worked closely with the other members of Kier Construction’s professional design team regarding the level of specification for this project and developed an efficient approach to the mechanical and electrical elements that works well for all. The energy efficient designs consider the impacts of overheating, daylighting and Part L compliance through dynamic simulation modelling, paying close attention to ensuring new building services systems integrate seamlessly with existing assets.
One of the main challenges of this project was the requirement for the school to remain operational during term time. The team has overcome this by collaborating with the contractors to ensure new services such as pipework and cabling can be installed alongside the existing services. Under these plans, the contractor is able 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.