Project Title: Penryn College BSF
Client: Cornwall County Council
Project Value: £20 million
Hulley contact:
Nigel Yemm
Shortlisted for 'Major Project of the Year' at the Building Services Awards 2009
Hulley & Kirkwood Consulting Engineers have been instrumental in the development of PenrynCollege, Cornwall’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) pathfinder project. PenrynCollege is the first project in Cornwall to be built under the Government’s BSF initiative.
The scheme opened a year ahead of other BSF schools in the South West’s funding group and was delivered on time and to budget. The scheme had to be constructed in one single phase to minimise disruption to teachers and students alike.
The school’s concept differs from the norm. Due to its coastal location, the design was based around ‘bringing the outside in’, using numerous sustainable materials and technologies. The concept was a result of high level discussions between the school, Cornwall County Council, students and the local community.
The building has been designed to meet the latest environmental requirements and had high environmental aspirations to deliver a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ accreditation and an A-Rated low carbon building.
The building makes use of a high thermal mass structure, biomass heating fuel, solar water heating, passive ventilation with night time pre-cooling, low energy lighting, rainwater harvesting and recycled building materials.
The two storey building is based around a glazed roof ‘top lit street’ running down the building’s spine with teaching, resource and sports spaces on either side, thus ensuring that pupils can move between activities without having to venture outside.
Daylighting is achieved through large windows in the classroom roof lights with self-cleaning glass and Sunpipes for smaller spaces. There is also a translucent roof and wall cladding panels in the sports hall for glare-free daylight.
Natural ventilation was a major requirement of the brief as it is energy and maintenance free and with the schools coastal location made perfect sense to incorporate. It was achieved through two strategies – smaller spaces such as classrooms are cross-ventilated from manual and automatically controlled windows to passive stacks linked to roof mounted Monovents. Larger spaces, including the Sports Hall, are ventilated by Windcatchers. These are designed to catch the wind from any direction using a series of external louvres linked to quadrants and internal vanes to bring a controlled rate of flow in, whilst warm air is expelled through the same route in a form of displacement ventilation.
The school’s primary heating source is a biomass woodchip fuelled boiler which feeds conventional radiators and underfloor heating. The biomass solution uses a smart skip linked to a buffer tank for fuel storage, enabling fuel transfer off-site. Fuel supplies have been secured through local sustainable sources using the local waste management company to move the skips. Solar panels are used to heat water for the showers and the kitchen and there is also a rainwater recovery system.
Plans have been submitted to construct a 15kW wind turbine, to offset the electrical base load of the school.
PenrynCollege was managed by a contractor-led team and Hulleys were appointed by Carillion Plc.
“H&K were instrumental in winning a contract for Mowlem/Carillion with Cornwall County Council primarily on the basis of providing an insightful report into renewable and sustainable technologies. H&K Director, Nigel Yemm, provided a presentation to Cornwall County Council which reaffirmed our intentions to provide a striking and different solution to the scheme in concert with the architects - Poynton Bradbury Wynter Cole.
Many of the design solutions reflected the intentions of all the stakeholders and the interface with the subcontractor, Mitie Engineering, realised good quality, economic but robust installation. My understanding is that after some time the majority of systems are functioning as expected
The accessibility to H&K is worthy of note. At no time did I not receive an answer and at all times all staff answered professionally and in sufficient detail. It is clear that there is a good level of ownership given to the staff.
Paul Dunkley, Carillion
