McVeigh Helps Bring Performance & Reliability to School

A new school build being heralded as ‘exemplar’ in sustainable design and construction has turned to McVeigh Insulations to achieve optimum performance and reliability in the construction process- and beyond….

Willmott Dixon has won the contract to erect the new one- and two-storey, 7000m2 building for John Ferneley, now uprated from a high school to college specializing in business and enterprise in Melton Mowbray; on behalf of Willmott Dixon specialist contractor McVeigh Insulations has undertaken the core structure, created from SIPs (structural insulated panels) to optimize ease and speed of construction, and the completed building’s thermal performance.

McVeigh has utilized its expertise in engineering of large format- up to 7m x 3.8m- SIPs to create the building shell, using a combination of 150mm and 180mm thick panels for the walls and pitched roofs. Each panel is pre-fabricated off-site, then simply craned into position and fixed to the primary steel framework. It is predicted the finished building will achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘very good’, in part due to the utilization of SIPs technology.

Project designer Luke Richardson of White Design, said, “The design proposal for the new 800 place college was to produce a school that is exemplar of sustainable design and construction in every aspect from site orientation to selection of materials. We worked closely with McVeigh Insulations from the outset, to create an effective fusion of our aims and available technology.”

Willmott Dixon’s Les Henson elaborated, “Using SIPs is our preferred option, for the thermal insulation, ease of construction and speed the technology brings to a project. McVeigh has consistently proven to us over a number of projects they are fast and reliable: for example, the 900m2 roof panels arrived on site on schedule and were in position within three days! At John Ferneley, we have been able to eliminate much of the secondary steel required under traditional techniques, and optimize natural light, with windows up to 5m wide, by using large format SIPs.”

McVeigh Insulations has over 80 years’ experience in creation of insulated structures with low air leakage, working for organisations including retailers Tesco and Sainsbury’s, hotel chains including Travelodge, leisure companies such as Xscape- building all of its indoor real snow ski slopes in the UK, and most major contractors. Its projects range from one of the first 1million ft2 cold stores in the UK through schools to housing.