A new secondary school in Manchester, Dean Trust Ardwick High School, has opened its doors only 12 months after design and construction began, making it Manchester’s fastest ever built school. Designed by Atkins, the school’s impressive construction programme was achieved using Select Schools, a Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) solution created by Laing O’Rourke, with modular units constructed offsite.
Richard Johnston, architectural associate at Atkins, said: “By using offsite technology, we were not only able to drastically reduce construction time, we were able to minimise waste and work within a heavily constrained site. Construction of the school could begin in the factory before site clearance and demolitions were complete. All of this was achieved without compromising the integrity of the teaching and learning environments.”
Fast track construction was crucial for Dean Trust Ardwick as the 1,200 new secondary places it provides will help Manchester City Council meet its task of finding places for an additional 16,000 students over the next few years.
Neil Strangeways, Select Schools, said: “The UK is predicted to need 880,000 extra school places by 2023, at a calculated cost of £12 billion. With Select Schools, the UK can build new schools like Dean Trust Ardwick quicker, while retaining high quality, flexibility and numerous design options, and most importantly, value for money for UK taxpayers.”
With the construction of Dean Trust Ardwick, 1,200 young people in the Ardwick area will now have a high school on their doorstep. The school is part of Manchester City Council’s regeneration project in the ar ea, and will offer the community new sports facilities including a state of the art 3G sports pitch.
Richard said: “Dean Trust Ardwick provides Manchester not only with additional school places, but a space where everyone in the community can meet, play and learn. Our design, as a symbol of community regeneration, aims to provide a high quality, flexible space where young people can develop both in and out of the classroom.”
The school was built on a brownfield site previously occupied by textile factories, a tram depot, housing and Daisy Mill. The site presented a number of challenges including contaminated brown field land, protected species and mobile phone mast relocation. All of the above ground works on the site were completed in only 27 weeks. The final scheme also includes the construction of a new public highway between Stockport Road and Langport Avenue, the new school and the existing St. Luke’s Primary School.
Atkins provided architecture, mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineering, project management, landscape architecture, ecology, environmental impact, fire safety, air quality management, acoustics, and BREEAM assessment for the school.