Oxford University Laboratories & Teaching Facilities

Client:

Portakabin Group

Build Type:

Modular

Value:

£3.6m

Size:

4670 m2

Introduction

Oxford University campus required urgent interim building accommodation to cater for an unexpected closure of the Tinbergen building. The new building accommodation was vital to provide specialist laboratories, offices, and teaching spaces, easing the impact created by the closing of the existing facilities.

Forming part of an offsite, modular, multiple building proposal, we were appointed to deliver both the mechanical and electrical design, plus site installation of services which play a vital role within this research environment.

Challenge

Due to the location of the city centre site and narrow access roads, deliveries of major heavy plant and equipment were problematic. Our challenge was to overcome the issues presented by the site conditions and to provide a design that maximised the potential of offsite modular construction thus minimizing the disruption to the existing campus facilities

Solution

The building accommodation includes teaching spaces, laboratories, offices, external ground level and rooftop plant spaces. Using BIM we completed a fully coordinated design of the services including ventilation, heating and cooling, public health systems, laboratory gases, power, lighting, security, data and building management systems to meet the clients brief and statutory regulations. All services were delivered to site and installed to this fully coordinated BIM model.

We improved on site installation times by utilising the offsite modular construction method by commencing our service installations prior to the module transport to the University site. The project duration for the Research Building was 24 weeks and 20 weeks for the Laboratory Building.

Project features included fully conditioned spaces via a central ventilation plant. There was a high standard of specialist acoustics employed throughout to suit planning conditions and the requirements of the teaching space design. The model was also used to assist with coordination, site planning and 3D visualisation

Result

A fully commissioned mechanical and electrical solution was delivered quickly, safely and in a controlled manner to meet the specialist requirements of this prestigious University campus.