Haymills - Mixed-Use Development - Cambridge, St Edmunds College
Date: 06 Apr 2006
Stowmarket based building contractor, Haymills, celebrated reaching the highest point in the construction of two new buildings for St Edmunds College in Cambridge by holding an official 'topping out' ceremony recently.
The event involved key personnel from the design team and the College, including Paul Luzio, Master of the College and the Reverend Dr Geoffrey Cook, Vice Master and Director of Building Development for St Edmunds, as well as Haymills Director, Steve Firman.
The project, designed by architects Bland Brown & Cole, with Davis Langdon acting as Quantity Surveyors, will see a new five-storey accommodation building and a four-storey study facilities building as the latest phase in the development of this growing College.
The development will incorporate 71 student bedrooms, a library, meeting and teaching rooms and associated amenities. In order to handle the weight of the new buildings, the foundation works consisted of installing 112 Continuous Flight Auger piles, amounting to 1600 metres in total length and ranging from depths of 11 metres to 18 metres.
Due to limited access and egress a 50-metre tower crane has been utilised as the most effective and safest way of moving plant and materials around the extremely tight site. Logistics and the careful sequencing of work and deliveries also require close communication between the College, students, Local Authority and suppliers - particularly as the surrounding environment is a fully functional 'live' College approaching exam season.
Although the constrained site has caused an additional challenge to the Haymills and professional Team, the close proximity to other College facilities will be beneficial to the students in the long run.
The height of the buildings has been deliberately restricted as well - to parallel the adjacent Richard Laws facility. However, the client's requirement of needing five levels of student accommodation resulted in building the actual structure four metres below ground level. This resulted in utilising a specially designed basement area constructed from Sika waterproofing concrete and a Hydro-Duct System. New pumping chambers have been created to drive all sewage and surface water from the building into the established drainage system, which at the time required careful traffic management to one of Cambridge's busiest one-way routes, Mount Pleasant.
Paul Rodwell, Haymills Site Manager says, "I am pleased with the progress of the project 45 weeks into construction. The accommodation building is currently at the final level, with all windows installed, mechanical and electrical works ongoing and masonry nearing completion. The facilities building, meanwhile, sees the completion of Welsh slate tiling, with metal fix and insulation to the basement area well underway."
This new chapter in the development of St Edmunds College, valued at 7.5m, is to be completed this summer - allowing the College to settle in before the new University year.
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