Laurus Ryecroft School

The third school for the Laurus Trust in Greater Manchester

A new secondary free school for 1,350 pupils aged 11-18, funded by the ESFA.

The three-storey structure provides general teaching facilities including science labs, a performance hall and connecting drama studio, LRC, four court sports hall and dedicated Sixth Form.

Project details

Client: ESFA/Laurus Trust
Contractor: BAM Construct UK
Architect: Pozzoni
Structural Engineer: Ramboll
M&E Consultant: Ramboll Service Engineering/BAM SE
Landscape Architect: Dally Henderson

View related projects

Third

school for Laurus Trust

Temporary

modular school built on site

Three

storey superblock design maximised space

Maximising space on site

The new building is on the site of a previous secondary school and was designed and constructed to maximise the space available. To achieve this a three storey superblock building with adjoining sixth form and sports hall wings were created. The building’s design also aims to aid the natural flow of pupils around the school with the help of a ‘figure of eight’ circulation strategy. Green spaces around the school have been retained and upgraded to provide outdoor areas for sports and education, as well as social areas.

A temporary school for 300 pupils

Before the works for the new school building could commence, BAM constructed a temporary school for 300 pupils, which was operational while the state of the art facilities were being constructed. The school was made of modular units, which were delivered to site and installed.

Addressing the challenges of COVID19 and materials delays

The school was two weeks before handover when the Government’s lockdown commenced. The impact was immediate. Overnight the workforce was cut in half and materials deliveries did not arrive as planned. Painting and decorating was a particular problem and we had to use staff from another sub-contractor to get the job done.

Before the lockdown, our brickwork supplier had a problem obtaining a specified brick from Belgium and they were six weeks late. We had to re-sequence substantially to offset this problem by moving our external and groundworks to the back of the programme and commencing on other works.

Building local supply chain relationships

Ryecroft is the third scheme for the Laurus Trust and the lessons learned on previous schemes enabled us to build strong relationships with the supply chain. As a result, we used some of the same suppliers on this scheme.