Sustainability team at Focus Consultants appointed on one of Nottingham’s ‘greenest’ projects

Sustainability experts at Focus Consultants have been appointed to help Nottingham’s new Digital Media Hub become one of the top three environmentally sustainable sites in the city.

The £9.1 million Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies is scheduled to be the flagship part of Nottingham Trent University’s Creative Quarter Campus and the main site of the Confetti Institute.

Work has just got underway on site on the six-storey building, which will connect the existing Confetti college centre on Convent Street and the Higher Education Centre on Parliament Street.

Designed by award-winning architects Allan Joyce, the striking building is hoping to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating, with the expectation that it will be one of the most environmentally sustainable buildings in Nottingham.

Focus, which has its headquarters at Nottingham’s Phoenix Business Park, has been appointed as the BREEAM Assessor and the BREEAM Accredited Professional, providing the design team with expert advice on built environment sustainability, environmental design and environmental assessment. 

Senior sustainability surveyor Jessica Bullers said: “The Energy and Sustainability team at Focus Consultants has had a long-standing, close relationship with Nottingham Trent University, providing sustainability support on a number of the university’s building projects.

“Working as the sustainability champion and simultaneously as the BREEAM assessor, we have established a good assessment process - leading to this latest project being potentially one of the most highly rated BREEAM buildings at the university, which is well recognised for being the UK’s ‘greenest’ university. For the past three years, NTU has been awarded first place in the People & Planet University League, which ranks all 145 UK universities on their commitment to and management of sustainability. 

“Focus is proud to have been appointed to the team developing the Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, which is not only a flagship part of NTU’s Creative Quarter Campus but likely to become one of Nottingham’s most environmentally friendly buildings too – an honour for a Nottingham-based company like Focus, which has been supporting the city in its development for more than 21 years.”

The new hub, due to be completed by summer 2018, will feature spacious contemporary classrooms and studios, a large Learning Resource Centre with private study facilities, creative social spaces and a rooftop garden. In addition to acting as Confetti’s headquarters and main reception, it will deliver all digital media games and interactive activity.

Work began before Christmas demolishing part of the existing Confetti site on Parliament Street to make way for the new build.  The demolition unearthed some key archaeological findings including Medieval artefacts, caves and a 700-year old well that have helped rewrite the history of Medieval Nottingham and provide information about the way the area was used over 700 years ago.

Contractor Stepnell has now begun work on site. 

Focus Consultants, which also has branches in Leicester, London and Boston and Aubourn in Lincolnshire, offers a range of support on all aspects of sustainable development, as well as services in funding and economic development, project management and building surveying.

For more information visit www.focus-consultants.co.uk

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Industrial park scheme role for Focus Consultants

Experts at Focus Consultants are playing a key role in a £2m development to build 19 new industrial units, which have scope to create or safeguard almost 300 jobs in coming years.

The company is providing a number of services for the North Kesteven District Council Blackwood Court development on North Hykeham’s Teal Park in Lincolnshire, including support project management, employer’s agent, principal designer/CDM advisor and BREEAM assessor.

Lindum Construction is building the scheme for North Kesteven District Council, which is part of the council’s commitment to attracting and supporting start-up businesses. The units will range in size from 500 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft and will be used for a wide range of uses from storage and distribution to general industrial premises.

Trevor Newton, partner at the Boston office of Focus, said: “Focus Consultants is very pleased to have been appointed by North Kesteven District Council to be a member of the team building Teal Park, which should prove very important to the economic development of the area.

“As a company, we provide a number of different services that are relevant for such developments, and professionals from both our Lincolnshire offices and our Leicester office are involved with this scheme.”

The units are due to be completed by mid-February, with lettings likely to start around the New Year.

Focus, which is based at Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham, and has offices at Boston and Aubourn in Lincolnshire, and in Leicester and at Holborn in London, offers services to the property and construction industry, including building surveying, contract administration, party wall surveying, clerk of works, quantity surveying, project management, CDM services and BREEAM assessments and energy calculations and modelling. 

The company also specialises in funding and economic development including area regeneration strategies, funding applications, economic impact appraisals, business plans, and research and evaluation.  Since 1994 Focus has secured for clients more than £953 million of grants for projects and businesses across the UK and delivered more than £1.3 billion worth of projects and programmes – making it one of the most successful businesses of its kind in the country.

Teal Park is a strategic allocated employment site, granted outline planning permission in 2011 for a total of 133,720m2 of employment floor space, a hotel, public house, leisure and trade showrooms. It is home to Siemens’ industrial gas turbine service business which occupies around a third of the space.

Under the GrowLN6 project, the wider LN6 area is a focus for coordinated partnership work by NKDC, City of Lincoln Council and the County Council to attract new inward business investment and expansion.

The photo shows partners lined up to mark the official start on site.

For more information visit www.focus-consultants.co.uk

Press release issued by Nottingham PR company Perfect 10 PR www.perfect10pr.co.uk

Success for Carlton Fire Station delights Focus Consultants and BSP Consulting

Two Nottingham companies are celebrating after a local fire station received an award for being the most sustainable new fire station in the country.

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service’s new £3.2m fire station at Carlton picked up the accolade at the BREEAM 2013 Building Awards.

The award was presented to the team including Focus Consultants, based at Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham, who designed and project managed the development in Manor Road.

Civil and structural engineer BSP Consulting, whose head office is in Oxford Street, Nottingham, was also part of the development team involved in demolishing the former fire station and creating a new purpose-built station featuring three appliance bays, a fire kit room, a laundry, unisex changing pods, offices, a gym, a quiet room, kitchen and dining area and an e-learning suite. The site also has a new five-storey tower with two-storey training building to enable realistic training to be undertaken.

The fire station was awarded a BREEAM excellent rating for its environmental credentials, and has now been named as one of 17 winning buildings at the BREEAM Awards, which were presented at this year’s Ecobuild Conference in London.

Its green credentials include timber cladding, stone blocks and a ‘green’ sedum roof. It also has energy efficient heating and cooling, low flush toilets and restricted flow rate taps, plus a water treatment and recirculation system in the vehicle wash area to both minimise water usage and the potential for watercourse pollution.

High levels of insulation to the building, coupled with energy efficient heating and cooling, has resulted in a community building delivering key services but with lower operational running costs.

Other ‘green’ features of the development included a travel plan to limit car usage and encourage cycling, with bike spaces and cyclist facilities provided and careful consideration to scheme planting working with an ecologist to maximize wildlife support. A robust site waste management plan was implemented during construction, to keep waste to a minimum through procedures to reduce and recycle, and at least 80% of the waste generated was diverted from landfill.

Focus Consultants associate and BREEAM assessor Jason Redfearn said: “We are extremely pleased that Carlton Fire Station has been rewarded for its sustainability and has been identified under the BREEAM assessment process as the ‘greenest’ new fire station built within the last year.

“BREEAM is the world's foremost environmental assessment method and rating system for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation, and has become one of the most comprehensive and widely recognised measures of a building's environmental performance.

“BREEAM Awards are made annually to the highest scoring building assessments certified under BREEAM Schemes in the preceding calendar year, and it’s a feather in the cap for the whole team that Carlton Fire Station received this accolade in the fire station category.”

Focus was involved throughout the project, providing a multi-disciplinary role, which included architectural design and employer’s agent as well as BREEAM and Energy Assessor services. BSP Consulting provided structural design, including pile and ground beam design, remediation of a heavily contaminated site, produced a flood risk assessment and carried out civil infrastructure design and drainage work.

BSP managing director David Sumner said: “BSP Consulting is delighted to hear of the success of the Carlton Fire Station project in the BREEAM Awards.”

Contractor for the scheme was Bowmer & Kirkland Building Services.

Ian Pritchard, head of procurement and estates for Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: “Achieving BREEAM for Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service demonstrates our continuing commitment to minimise our impact on the environment. This is a community fire station with the express intention to integrate into the local community and in doing so lead by example.”

Ecobuild is the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment and brings together communities to learn, share, experience and discover the future of sustainable building and construction.  

For more information visit www.focus-consultants.co.uk or www.bsp-consulting.co.uk

Press release issued by Nottingham PR company Perfect 10 PR www.perfect10pr.co.uk

Focus Consultants plays key ‘green’ role in university library

East Midlands-based Focus Consultants is helping Nottingham Trent University to create a new sustainable library at its Brackenhurst Campus.

The one-storey building is being built to a ‘very good’ BREEAM rating to reflect the high environmental credentials of the project.

A team from Focus has been involved from the initial consultation and design stages and will continue to play a key role now that work has started on site, and through to completion by early Summer 2013.

Associate and BREEAM assessor Jason Redfearn said: “Focus is very pleased to be working directly with Nottingham Trent University for the first time. The university has really considered the approach to BREEAM and how best to integrate it successfully into the new library, creating an energy efficient building that minimises its environmental impact.”

The library at the campus near Southwell in Nottinghamshire will feature sustainable materials in construction, energy efficient heating, photo-voltaic panels on the roof, high levels of insulation and will link in to the existing biomass heating system on site.

BREEAM - the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method - is the world’s foremost environmental assessment method and measures a building’s green credentials. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation and has become one of the most comprehensive and widely recognised measures of a building's environmental performance.

Focus, which is based at Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham, and has offices in Leicester, London, Boston and Aubourn near Lincoln, was appointed as BREEAM Assessors at early design stage for the Brackenhurst scheme.

The firm was then appointed to undertake design stage assessment and post-construction stage assessment.

Focus BREEAM assessor Jessica Bullers, based in the Princess Road East office in Leicester, is driving the project for Focus.

The Energy Carbon Sustainability team at Focus Consultants offers a range of services to support sustainable development, including low carbon consultancy, environmental assessment methods and regulation compliance.

The company also specialises in creative approaches to securing funding packages and delivering high quality projects across the Midlands and the UK. Focus has secured more than £800 million of grant assistance, and delivered more than £1 billion of projects and programmes since 1994.

www.focus-consultants.co.uk

Issued by Nottingham PR company Perfect 10 PR www.perfect10pr.co.uk