are the images of dingy cobbled streets and plumes of smoke rising from the chimneys that punctuated the skyline. In their place are modern buildings, examples of highly innovative engineering and architecture, a regenerated city centre that is attracting hordes of new people every year.
The 1996 bomb blast that devastated the heart of Manchester acted as the catalyst for so much of its redevelopment, but not everyone has moved forward quite as quickly. One such sector to be left behind has been the city’s school buildings. In April, engineers Emcor Drake & Scull, construction firm Wilmot Dixon, and architect Robinson Design Group were one of three partnerships selected under the Manchester Education Framework to begin changing this.
The framework has taken on board the challenges from Rethinking construction and the city council’s objectives reflect strongly the themes of making proper educational establishments available to everyone, improving educational results and creating a greater sense of inclusion in the community through well built and well delivered facilities.
The partnership, collectively know as BE (Building Education) has built 25 new schools across the north of England since their coming-together, and Geoff Eardley, special projects regional director for Emcor, believes their approach will be just as successful in Manchester as it has been elsewhere: “Manchester is a long way down the education league tables and if you look at a lot of the big inner cities their standards are quite poor. I’ve done a lot of research, talking to headmasters to find out why, and there is a link between unemployment, poor social areas and education. So we set out to create a link between capital investment and improving school standards.”
The aim of the city council is to create more than a school, as Eardley explains. “I don’t like this term school any more. They are much more an education facility. Manchester wants to make sure they not only improve education standards but that they pull the communities back together again, with the school as a focal point, so we’re looking at concepts where we can use a new school not only to interest teachers and pupils, but the whole community.”
One of the key elements in the BE approach is to involve all the stakeholders in the development of the design, says Eardley. “In the past we’ve always modified or extended schools. Now we’re building new schools, proper educational facilities, and for the first time the teachers and pupils can have an input. They know best what they want in their school.”
The opinions and suggestions from all the stakeholders are then drawn into a ‘partnering charter’ that is signed by everyone and can be referred back to by the team at the end of a project when they can effectively ‘tick off’ the goals they set out to achieve.
It is a philosophy that has stood the BE partnership in good stead on previous jobs: “In the schools we did for Cheshire county council, we involved all the parents, the teachers and the pupils in the design. We held monthly workshops with them and also set up an internet site that actually allowed the kids to use the construction as part of their curriculum.” One such example of this has been the installation of a system that allows pupils to view the bems and monitor how much energy is being used for heating and lighting and then use this data as part of their school projects. Pupils on past projects have also been consulted on classroom colours and on the design of the open spaces for their schools.
Rethinking design
In terms of design, flexibility has become the buzzword as far as classrooms are concerned. “The days when you went into one classroom for registration then moved to another for history and so on are gone,” says Eardley. “We design rooms now so they are totally flexible. Partitions can be moved and the room’s purpose can be changed, pupils can spend most of their education in the one room.”
The construction of completely new schools has also allowed designers to eradicate problems that old school buildings presented. In junior schools, Eardley says that there was a major issue with pupils struggling to stay awake in the afternoons “It’s all down to ventilation. Old schools are poorly ventilated, most of the windows are sealed up, the heating just chugs away and by 2.30 pm it makes kids fall asleep.” In the design of new schools, the team has come up with the solution of purging the rooms instantly between each lesson, allowing pupils to return after a short break to a room with completely refreshed air.
The designs that Eardley’s team are putting together are trying to use natural ventilation. He says the height of a school hall offers an ideal environment for such systems to work. “The assembly hall is a naturally high space and that provides a chimney effect which gives you natural ventilation through a building. So it’s a case of trying to use the design of the school rather than putting a big fan system in.” One of the schools BE has been awarded in Manchester will be the first they have used wind generation on. “The benefits in terms of providing energy are obvious,” says Eardley, “but from the pupils’ point of view, it’s actually showing them an example of renewable energy, which goes back to this idea of getting them interested in what we’re doing.”
Partnering plusses
The venture between Manchester and the BE partnership is the first time the city council has entered into a partnering agreement, and Eardley is confident that this way of working is crucial to the success of every project. “Manchester checked us out thoroughly to make sure that we were actually partnering properly and we explained our ethos to them clearly from the outset. Our partnering goes all the way down the supply chain and we take the same partners from school to school, because we’re all learning and it’s pointless one of us learning and not passing it on.”
As the partnering mantra goes, getting everyone together as early as possible is a vital part of the process. Eardley says that getting manufacturers and suppliers to the table early brings benefits for everyone. “In the past we’ve gone to suppliers and manufacturers and said, for example, a boiler plant wasn’t quite right for a school, or we’ve had to modify a light fitting for a classroom. By getting them in early, as we have done for the design of the Manchester schools, we can ask them to manufacture exactly what we want. That adds a lot of value for us and it shows them, with all these schools being built, that there is a massive marketplace for them.”
The attitude on site is also markedly different from traditionally run jobs, as Eardley explains: “On a conventionally run site, if you went into a plant room and asked someone what he was doing, he’d say “I’m piping this boiler up to this pump.” But I went into a plant room in a school we designed in Sheffield and asked the same question and the workman said: “I’m building this plant room as part of this school.” The difference is that he was actually building part of a school, not just doing his bit and walking away.” Eardley says this teamwork ethic also has a positive impact on health and safety. “On all the partnered jobs we’ve done with Wilmot Dixon, we haven’t had one reported accident to date, and I think this comes down to working for each other. Wherever our workmen are at the end of the day, that’s the area they clean up, even if that mess isn’t theirs. It means less wastage, less damage – it’s just a totally different approach.”
The biggest hurdle that all partners had to overcome, was accepting the fact that they would all know each other’s costs and how much they were going to make. “We produce a cost model for a school that includes everything right the way down to the breakdown in our price,” he says. “We show the city council our target cost and they know from our suppliers our costs and the mark up we have agreed. That was strange at first but it’s how we work together.”
Another advantage of this approach demonstrated by the BE partnership is that, having proved that it works in places like Cheshire and Sheffield, they continue to win further jobs. Eardley says: “We’ve got work into the next year and beyond and that’s the benefit of working together. With any culture change, people have to quickly see a benefit. Because we are working in the same teams, moving from school to school, they can see that they’ve got work into the future, and they’re enjoying it.” Keeping the same teams together also means that problems encountered on early jobs have gradually been ironed out, which has had a dramatic impact on construction time. “We’ve got it down from 24 weeks to about 18 weeks now. We’ve also got the number of defects right down. On a school we handed over in Sheffield, there were four defects, only one of which was m&e. We also have a care policy where we go back to make sure any problems are sorted out and to get some feedback that we can carry forward to the next school.”
With attitudes like this, Manchester’s schools will soon catch up with the progress the rest of the city has made.
Getting it right this time
The theme of end-user involvement in school design was reiterated vigorously at the 2004 BRE annual conference, titled ‘Building for people’. Speaking at the event, Sharon Wright, managing director of School Works, a not for profit company that promotes good school design, said: “This is our best opportunity since Victorian times to get school buildings right.” The governments’ Building schools for the future programme will see capital spending on secondary schools rise to £5.1 billion a year by 2005, and Wright is adamant that teachers, pupils and the community must be included in the development of their school to ensure that the building meets their requirements. But they must act as responsible clients who can make well informed decisions about how they want their school to turn out. “It’s not just about raising expectations, it’s about building the capacity in schools for them to be able to articulate clearly what they need.”There is a clear link between the quality of the school and its pupils’ results, as demonstrated at School Works’ first partner school, Kingsdale School in Southwark. “In three years, the number of GCSE A-C grades achieved has risen from 11% to 42% and the school has been named among the top 20 most improved in the country,” said Wright.
A three stage participatory process was undertaken at the school to identify the key educational issues and the school’s relationship with the wider community. “In the past the emphasis has been heavy on cost and light on educational value,“ she said. The approach used at Kingsdale encompassed the opinion of everyone involved with the school. The end result was that the school came out with a defined new educational vision from which clear design proposals could be formed. A Price Waterhouse Coopers assessment of the scheme concluded that the participatory process had added real value to the building.
Using processes like this is a far cry from the way school buildings used to be built, and Wright made the point that for too long, teachers had been ignored by architects who thought they knew better. But as these new processes are proving, by bringing everyone to the table from the very beginning, the design team can have a clear understanding of what actually works, and the pupils, teachers and the wider community end up with a building that addresses all of their requirements.
Wright concluded by saying: “We can design schools that are flexible, inclusive and personal to their community, providing schools that are inspirational and demonstrate that education is valued by all those involved. This is just too important to get wrong again.”
Source
Building Sustainable Design
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