Production of services designs for a sustainable, high technology engineering building

Engineering Building

Nottingham Trent University wished to develop a new build facility to provide additional teaching, support and research spaces for the School of Science and Technology's Engineering Department and the Institute of Industrial Digitalisation, Robotics and Automation.

We were appointed to provide comprehensive mechanical and electrical designs to meet the university's target of achieving BREEAM Excellent. Located on a prominent site within the Clifton Campus the facility provides conventional laboratory spaces, cold storage, fume cabinets, open plan studios, workshop spaces with specialist equipment and staff accommodation.

As detailed designs were completed, the university required an additional 1000m2 adding to the building. This required us to completely redesign the building, putting pressure on the overall project programme.

As the building was located in the heart of the campus, there were concerns over discharge from the fume cupboard flues.

The entrances to the building were redesigned to increase the amount of glazing, requiring us to devise solutions to avoid overheating.

Through additional design meetings to develop the proposals quickly and with enhanced levels of coordination achieved using BIM, we overcame the time pressure on the design.

Pick Everard’s thermal modelling team carried out a fume dispersion model to evaluate the near and far field dispersal across the site. This allowed us to set the height of the flue safely.

To resolve the overheating issues our team modelled different building strategies that allowed us to develop a passive solution utilising stack ventilation.