Sir Peter Hall SEMH School, Bury St Edmunds

Sir Peter Hall School in Bury St Edmunds involved the construction of a brand new 80-place school for pupils with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs.

Key Stats

80 place SEMH school
Delivered on time and budget
£6m social value invested
100% recycling rate
40/45 CCS score

At a Glance

Client

Suffolk County Council

Budget

£7.3 million

Completion

August 2022

Location

Suffolk

Framework

Suffolk County Council

Sector

SEND Education

Social value

£6 million

Sustainability

210 tonnes carbon saved

An inspiring place to learn

Delivered through the Suffolk County Council framework and in partnership with Concertus, the project involved the design and construction of a brand new two-storey education facility.

The school, newly named at Sir Peter Hall School, consists of three standard primary classrooms, a main hall, hygiene room, food and design technology rooms on the ground floor, whilst upstairs houses eight general teaching classrooms and a library.

Outside, the school will benefit from sports pitches, hard play areas and a multi-use games area.

Saving 261 tonnes of carbon

As part of our Intelligent Solutions approach, we are committed to helping our customers reduce carbon wherever physically possible. The project team took part in Morgan Sindall's 10 tonne challenge initiative, which is implemented across all our sites and effectively asks whether the carbon on the project can be reduced by a minimum of 10 tonnes.

At the Sir Peter Hall School project, the team were able to complete this challenge, achieving a 261tonne saving for the project. This involved completing the following to achieve this feat:

Re-use and storage of sub-soil on site has saved over 80 lorry journeys which equates to 6,9 tonnes of carbon saved.
18,030 electric miles to site has reduced the carbon use from 4,8 tonnes of carbon to 1,4 tonnes of carbon used. Saving 3,3 tonnes of carbon.
Connection of welfare units to mains electric for an additional 5 weeks saved us using 750L of diesel. Which all together saved 1,9 tonnes of carbon
Use of Electric Arc Furnace for the produce of the Steelwork for the Steel Frame saved 249 Tonnes of Carbon.

52Y005_M69_medium — Sensory room in the new school

Overcoming the site challenges

With the site covering the former Rougham Airfield runway, early planning documents showed a potential UXO risk. To eradicate this, specilists were engaged to carry out early surveys and contamination tests to make the site ready.

The team also worked with the customer team to get the enabling works package on site early, prior to any bird nesting and badger set establishment - this meant any potential ecology-based delays were eradicated.

With the site in close proximity to another local school, strict delivery periods were upheld outside of school hours. In addition, the team sent regular newsletters to the surrounding community and employed road cleaning equipment and wheel washers to minimise the impact on the surrounding community.

Partnering with West Suffolk College

In order to inspire future constructioneers, we signed a partnership with West Suffolk College during 2021.

Although this marked six years of collaboration, this step formalised the partnership, which means we continue to deliver upon the educational engagement requirements outlined in the gatsby benchmarks.

Throughout the Sir Peter Hall school project, our teams welcomed students on site to learn about careers, whilst also giving lectures in the college on a diverse range of industry topics.

Working with Morgan Sindall Construction is proof that long-term partnerships with meaningful activities and targets really do work. It has helped us develop our students and it’s helped Morgan Sindall find talented apprentices that have gone on to climb their career ladder. Knowing the partnership will continue long into the future is something the college is really grateful for and I know our students are excited about their futures because of it too.
Debbie Coomes, West Suffolk College