Refurbishment work continues to improve Engineering’s estate

A programme of refurbishment for the Faculty of Engineering is progressing as part of the wider expansion and improvement of its estate.

Work on the new Graduate School has already started and designs are being worked up for the New Engineering Building at Jessop East so that a planning application can be submitted in the summer.

With an additional 1600 students and 381 staff expected by 2020, that alone won’t tackle all the accommodation challenges, so the next steps include a major refurbishment of the Mappin engineering complex which is designed to improve the student experience.

This will be done with the minimum of disruption and movement of staff and students and starts with a five year programme to refurbish St George’s campus and a scheme for the conversion of the existing Graduate Research Facility building to house additional research laboratories.

This will significantly improve the condition of the existing building stock. We measure the quality of our stock in percentage terms and this should improve from their current 31 per cent A/B rating to 70 per cent A/B. This improvement will provide a range of high quality spaces for staff and students to use. There will also be savings in energy consumption and in the effect of our carbon footprint.

Work on other small projects to enable growth in the short-term will also take place.

These include:
• New Research Laboratories in Nanoscience – work on three new Electronic Research laboratories on the first floor of the Nanoscience Building is almost complete.
• Edgar Allen House – Work will be completed next month (June) so that Engineering can occupy two and a half floors of this building by the beginning of July. The top floor is being converted to a 145 desk IT teaching suite while the first floor will be occupied by PGR students. Part of the second floor will provide a meeting room and some academic office accommodation.
• 36 – 38 Victoria Street – this building is being refurbished to accommodate an Engineering research group and will be completed by mid June.
• Flexible teaching space and break out rooms in Portobello – the new term in September will see these rooms completed giving a large cohort flexible teaching space equipped with AV facilities for 125 students. The work will be done over July and August and cause a minimum of disruption to those inside the Portobello building.
• New Research Clean Room – a feasibility design on this new facility to be housed in the Kroto building on North Campus will start in June. It should be completed in March 2013. This will replace the existing research clean room in Mappin which is more than 25 years old. The space released in Mappin will be used to create new engineering research facilities during the phase one refurbishment works.

Students and staff working at St George’s Campus will benefit from the first phase of this programme of refurbishment.

This will begin in August with general maintenance. In September, further essential maintenance work will begin in Mappin on C floor corridor, Hadfield A floor basement corridor and Hadfield Tower M floor. Intermittent noise will be heard but disruption to normal activities will be kept to a minimum.

There will be a temporary closure of room A03 in Hadfield basement for four weeks and the access corridor to Hadfield Tower floor M will be closed but access to all other rooms will be maintained.

Next March (2013) internal refurbishment will start on Mappin C floor (south end only), Hadfield basement and Hadfield floor M together with essential maintenance work around St George’s campus as a whole. In addition, all windows to Hadfield Tower will be replaced. Occupants of the various rooms where wholesale refurbishment and alterations are planned will be provided with temporary alternative accommodation where necessary. This work will create some vibration and noise to adjoining rooms over six months. It is due to finish in August 2013.

This refurbishment work will improve the buildings and provide an additional 146 square metres of high quality research laboratory space. A total of 213,000 KWH per year of gas and electricity will be saved and the carbon footprint of the refurbished areas will be improved by 26 per cent.

For more information on the refurbishment of Engineering’s estate please see:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/faculty/engineering/estate/refurb

For general information on improvements to the University’s estate, including Engineering’s, please see: http://www.shef.ac.uk/efm/currentprojects