- TOTAL COST
- £11M
- COMPLETED
- 2015
- DURATION
- 1Y4M
- RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS
Project description
Changing the skyline of Norwich, All Saints Green has set the standard for new student accommodation throughout the city. With generous room sizes and sweeping views, the accommodation gives students a great start in their new studies.
Constructed in a 65 week period, this nine storey, 228 bed scheme was built on an extremely tight footprint, surrounded on all sides by businesses, YMCA Accommodation, the city bus station and a hotel. This required a great deal of logistics planning to ensure that all neighbours could continue operating as normal throughout the project.
As the first purpose built city centre student accommodation hub in Norwich, All Saints Green sets the benchmark for how developers, contractors and universities can unite to create a state-of-the-art space. Its bold design, with its intentionally irregular façade featuring 200,000 bricks, turns heads along the busiest city centre highways.
This car free, BREEAM Very Good scheme also included the refurbishment and renovation of No 50 All Saints Green – a Grade II listed Building – as well as the creation of a new public pocket park with landscaping and plants. It was delivered on time and on budget, ensuring that students moved in on the day promised at project inception, ready to begin their studies at Norwich University of the Arts.
Responsible business
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People
- Making sure the University was involved throughout the build, regular visits and site tours were held for BA Architectural students to help them understand the complexities of the design and its development throughout the project
- Being considerate to the community and surrounding neighbours was key – the site met monthly with community and business groups ensuring our approach was built around their needs. This helped the project score 43/50 under the Considerate Constructors Scheme
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Planet
- The project will achieve a BREEAM Very Good rating and, as a car free development, seeks to encourage green travel from all its occupants
- Indeed, situated at the city centre, next to the transport hubs and close to the University, it expects to meet its green travel targets.
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Profit
- From a local approach to the procurement of subcontractors and materials the project re-invested significantly in the local economy.
Challenges
Surrounded tightly by the main bus station, YMCA accommodation, Aviva’s HQ, Travelodge and the bustling Queens Road; sensitive logistics and innovative scheduling were pivotal in its success.
At design stage, we delivered a value engineering exercise focussed on innovative design to change the ‘out of sight areas’, whilst ensuring the user experience remained unaffected. This saved £750k through redesigned ventilation systems, alternative frame selection, off-site bathroom pods and new door access controls.
The team decided to use a mobile crane, which carried a shorter lead in period, presented less risk of being winded off, and remained flexible for a variety of material lifts in constrained spaces.
Testimonials
“The team has gone beyond what was expected. A number of people involved in the job were local Norfolk people – and there was a pride in what was coming out of the ground – everyone could see it would be a milestone building. Honesty, commitment, transparency, excellence and from our point of view there was an underlying trust – we had that from day one and couldn’t recommend them enough.”
David Campbell
Managing Director, Alumno Developments
