A partnership between contractor Willmott Dixon and Scape, the building procurement one-stop-shop run by a consortium of local councils, is claiming to offer a 20-30% per cent cost saving on school building, Building reported.
Sunesis is promoting three off-the-shelf, standardised primary designs school designs, a faster procurement process and a standardised build process, and also promising to get a school on site 16 weeks from the date of order.
The joint venture company now wants to extend the concept to other building types including secondary schools, leisure and healthcare. Mark Robinson, chief executive of Scape, said: “A lot of our clients have already expressed interest in a Sunesis secondary and we have been to see the education department, who are keen on this,” he added.
The story comes a week after a report in The Times and Building Design, saying that the Department of Education could be planning to endorse six standardised “flat-pack” school designs for the post-BSF secondary school building programme.
This week’s Building Design reports that Willmott Dixon and Sunesis are working with architect Atkins on the secondary schools designs. Work is said to be well-advanced, with the Department for Education already directing clients their way.
The architect’s newspaper also says that Balfour Beatty and Laing O’Rourke are believed to be working up “template” schools.
Sunesis plans to launch its service with three different primary school designs. The Keynes, which buys 1,277 m2 of space, has a price tag of £2.3m and delivery time of nine months.
With a delivery time of 13 months, the Paxton costs £3.8m for 1,583 m2 and the Newton, intended for sites next to busy roads, is built around a courtyard.
The designs are based on previous Scape models. For example, the Paxton has been based on a Scape design for Kingsmead School in Cheshire, which was then repeated for two schools in Monmouthshire.
According to Sunesis, a dozen councils are “champing at the bit” to sign up for the product which will be available from the end of this month.
Warwickshire Council’s design and construction group manager, Julian Humphreys, said: “Doing nothing in relation to schools is not an option. So I applaud Scape and their partners for coming up with this concept.”
But he added: “I’m not yet convinced the idea as it stands is robust enough – there is work to do, but we’d look forward to working collaboratively to work up a product that meets our needs.”
