5 December 2013

A school built by Costain has won Best Education Building in this year’s National Building Excellence Awards.
 
Deptford Green School in London Borough of Lewisham, south London was completed in September 2012. Its pupils are now enjoying state-of-the-art facilities that include wireless technology throughout, a sound recording studio and radio station, and an astroturf pitch.
 
In May the school was named Best Educational Development for the London region in the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) regional awards. Now it has won the national prize, awarded at a ceremony in London in November. Dan Rennison, Costain Head of Design Management, collected the award along with Anthony Mottram, Lewisham Regulatory Services Manager, Thiru Moolan, Lewisham Building Control, and Alistair Walker, WGI Architects.
 
As Dan explained, the LABC National Building Excellence awards are not judged on architectural beauty: “They showcase buildings and design teams that have had to deal with technical issues and difficult sites, and come up with innovative and creative solutions.”
 
“At Deptford Green we faced the challenge of working on a very tight site in an urban environment, and having to manage relationships with neighbours along with deliveries. This was all carried out adjacent to the existing school and after we had provided a large temporary teaching facility to allow the site to be cleared.”
 
The awards' judges praised the project for “bringing all the school’s students together on a single site, making sure the new buildings were fully accessible for disabled people and including various sustainable technologies to meet sustainability targets.”
 
Dan put the success of the project down to close collaboration with the client, London Borough of Lewisham’s Local Education Partnership (LEP): “This helped us to not only provide a sound and accessible learning environment on a single site, but to also exceed most of our green targets, with the new building achieving an excellent energy efficiency rating.”
 
For the school’s Executive Headteacher Bob Ellis, the new building is “an inspirational environment to be working in”. He added: “This investment has had a very positive impact on students' achievement.  In August we celebrated some of our best ever GCSE results.”
 

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