Caring About Construction

Published by Angela May for McVeigh Insulations in Education

A new high quality campus aiming to achieve ‘very good’ environmental ratings is taking that grading through to its construction techniques…..

West Cheshire College has commissioned two new campuses, at Ellesmere Port and Chester, at a cost of £65m, aimed at providing high quality facilities to improve vocational opportunities in the area. Being built by BAM Construction, the core of the 19,500m²,

five- storey Ellesmere Port build has been created using large format structural insulated panels (SIPs), manufactured, supplied and installed by McVeigh Insulations.

Adrian Moss, BAM project manager, observed, “SIPS suited the programme because of the tight construction timeline, enabling us to create a structure quicker and to high insulation standards, to help achieve the BREEAM ‘very good’ target rating. Very few companies could even offer SIPS as large as we wanted- up to 7.5m- but McVeigh delivered beyond requirements, in product, cost and service. The team was very attentive, cared, and the quality of the onsite work was exceptional!”

McVeigh factory-produced some 5500m² of 150mm thick SIPs, providing a U value of just 0.20W/m²K and airtightness of less than 5m³/hr/m² ,well within even the tighter requirements of the new Approved Document L. Panels were up to 4m x 7.5m, with factory- formed window openings up to 6m x 1.5m without any need for additional secondary steel reinforcement.

Due to open in 2011, the new Ellesmere Port campus will provide facilities for hairdressing and beauty therapy, hospitality and catering, art design and media, health and social care, sport, public services and performing arts plus community resources including restaurants, a spa and health centre.

McVeigh Insulations has over 40 years’ experience in creation of insulated structures with low air leakage. The company has worked 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, where its latest work has included the engineering of SIPs for three blocks of student accommodation, each 20 storeys high.