DISCOVERY!

I have just discovered - and most of you probably already know this - so apologies - that if you double click on an image on this blog it brings it up in a seperate window and really big - so you can see the photo / drawing properly!

Nicola

Planning Meeting - 10 Nov

We met with the planners today. This was our first meeting with them and a perfect time - as we now have a preferred option but we are also not so fixed we cannot respond to anything the planners comment on.

We have received a few comments that we are now including in the design - including investigating whether we have any bats living on the site - but mainly in the existing buildings. So if anyone knows of any bat roosts - please shout!

Nicola

BREEAM Meeting - 9 Nov

We had a meeting yesterday [9th Nov] with the independant BREEAM assessor. Breeam is tool used to measure how 'sustainable' your proposals are. This is a national tool that can be used to compare a number of buildings. At present the only built and completed primary school in the UK that has achieved Breeam Excellent it St Lukes Primary School in Wolverhampton. We are lucky enough to have the same M&E engineer on our consultant team who did St Lukes [Ernest Griffiths]. There is one other school under construction that also should achieve Excellent.

In our initial assessment we scored 'Very Good' but we are now on a mission to get to 'Excellent'. This is no mean feet and will need buy in from both the school and GCC, but we are all keen to have a good go at it!!!

Will keep you posted as we progress through the project.

Nicola

Option Appraisal and Choice!

The whole consultant team presented the more developed two options to the User Group on the 4th November. Architect, QS, structural engineer, M&E engineer and landscape architect. At this stage it is vital to understand that we are still talking very broad brush principles of where things go - rather than the detail. There were some basic principles that we asked the staff / parents to decide on, with the main difference between the options being the accessibility to outside space from the classroom. We left a number of boards and models describing each scheme and asked for as much discussion to take place. We heard yesterday that the decision from the school was to go for the single-storey option.

We think this is the right way to go and very appropriate to this school and this site.

We have had a number of very detailed feedback items which we are now endeavouring to accommodate in the next iteration of the plans. We are gearing up for a Stage A/B report on Wednesday 18th Nov.

Once again we should re-iterate that the plans are in NO WAY fixed or finalised. There is much development and feedback required to fine-tune this proposal to exactly what is required from all groups.

Nicola