Oaks Day Nursery - Developer case study

A brand-new, fit-for-purpose nursery to replace the inadequate, temporary buildings which had stood for many years.
Location

Kent

Build System

Kingspan TEK®

Client

Jenner Group

Project Type

Nursery

KTS Casestudy Developer Oaks Day Nursery3

The project

A brand-new, fit-for-purpose nursery to replace the inadequate, temporary buildings which had stood for many years.

The University of Kent had offered children’s day nursery facilities to staff and students for many years at a site adjoining Keynes College. The nursery operated from temporary buildings which were beyond their effective life and not suitable for redevelopment.​ The biggest challenge of this project was to design, manufacture and construct a large nursery building in a demanding timescale that enabled the main contractor to complete the entire build in 24 weeks.

The most demanding aspects of this project were the need to meet the ambitious programme set by our client, and the challenge of protecting the Douglas Fir and glulam frames from damage during construction. We struck up a great relationship with the design team from day one, and this helped ensure that the architectural vision was delivered undiluted by constraints imposed by our structure.

Paul Duffin, KTS

The design

The requirements for the new building were that it should provide a new facility to cater for 90 nursery places. The solution developed by Lee Evans Partnership LLP was a single storey building with two asymmetric low pitched roofs and four rooms for the children, each with related facilities. Jenner Group were appointed as main contractor following a 2-stage tender process, and the scheme was valued at £1.4 million, impressively only taking 24 weeks to construct from start to finish. The layout of the building was heavily child-centric, with particular considerations given to the provision of a safe and secure environment. We provided a building envelope using Kingspan TEK®. The SIPs panels were wrapped around a series of glulam frames and the structure took an impressive six weeks to construct. The outside covered spaces were framed in large sections of Douglas Fir with expressed bolted connections.

Published January 2015

We have successfully worked with KTS in recent years, mainly within a residential sector. In our experience not only do they provide a very good product on-site, but they also have an excellent technical support team. We were awarded the design and build scheme on a two stage basis and fundamental to our stage one bid was our construction programme, based around an offsite manufacturing solution. Early dialogue with KTS in terms of design development was key to the success of the project, which was delivered on time and in budget.

Dean Elvidge, Business Development Director, Jenner Group