Sixteen teaching spaces, handed over on the last Friday of the holidays

The problem

Four temporary classroom units, thirty years old, condemned by the trust’s own condition survey. The replacement had to be open for the autumn term, and the only access to the site was through a live playground.

What we did

Manufacture ran through the summer term while the school was still in use. Foundations went in during the last fortnight of term, working weekends to stay out of the playground at break times. Thirty-two modules were craned in over four days at the start of the holidays, and fit-out and commissioning ran through the remaining four weeks.

The building was handed over on the Friday before term, with the acoustic test results and the O&M pack complete.

What the trust said mattered

Not the speed, in the end. It was that the price at handover was the price in the contract, because the foundation design was fixed before manufacture started and there was nothing left to discover.