Ellis Williams Architects worked with ISG Construction and Premier Modular on the Beaver Road Primary School project under the £35million Education Basic Needs (EBN) programme which addresses Manchester City Council’s urgent need for additional school places.

The three-storey School, which provides 2,380m2 of accommodation for 550 pupils, was designed to achieve BREEAM Very Good and also achieved EPCA ratings – most of the credits to hit these targets stemmed from the overall airtightness of the building, its efficiency and natural ventilation system.

The facilities provided for the school included a fully fitted out sensory room, 14 no. classrooms, IT suites, offices, kitchen, a double height sports hall and an external play area.

Digital construction to BIM Level 2 enabled co-ordination of the design to ensure DfMA was achieved whilst avoiding rework and duplication. ISG’s bespoke Data Capture Process provided automated collection and input of COBie data from the whole supply chain resulting in a fully integrated Asset Information Model (Manchester City Council’s first fully integrated BIM Level 2 Asset Information Model) easily integrated with the Council’s Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) systems.

Beaver Road was named Education Project of the Year 2019 at the Offsite Construction Awards in London.  Judges were impressed with the integrated team approach to the project, which saw Beaver Road achieve RIBA Stage 5 in 19 weeks from a standing start and beat 32 other projects to win the highly sought after award.

Winner at the North West Regional Construction Awards 2019 in the Off Site Construction Award category.