As part of the nationwide, £325million ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme, Leicester City Council embarked on a series of school improvement projects that involved rebuilds, extensions and refurbishments of four schools: Fullhirst, Judgemeadow Community College, Soar Valley and Beaumount Leys.  The projects coincided with the changeover from Approved Document B to BB100 for fire safety design in schools, which saw a greater emphasis on the specification of sprinkler systems for school buildings.  In order to help reduce the cost of the projects, FDS Consult’s value engineering expertise was brought in and the company applied its innovative fire design approach to the four schools, generating total cost savings in excess of £1 million.

At Fullhirst school, the project involved a substantial extension that would more than double the size of the original school building, with the new build element of the scheme wrapping around the old building, which was also being refurbished as part of the programme.  Using the team’s creative approach to value engineering, FDS successfully justified the removal of the sprinkler system from the specification.

FDS Consult worked with the architectural design of each building to reduce the specification whilst enhancing safety and the FDS team’s value engineering and fire design expertise delivered further cost savings and safety improvements.