The Derby Cathedral School is an impressive 10,000m2 Secondary and Sixth Form School in Derby. The school is a new build comprising of three floors consisting of classrooms, a sports hall, dining hall, and an atrium style library. We were responsible for the internal partitions and ceilings throughout the building.
The project began in September 2020 and finished in July 2021. Fortunately, COVID-19 and the national shortage of materials had minimal impact on our works, as we remained organised throughout. We were able to adapt to the new COVID guidelines and BAM site rules with no health and safety issues.
This is the second project and school that we have worked on for BAM Construct UK, following the success of the Rugby Free School last year. (If you want to find out more about that project: read more here). We have developed a good, open and honest relationship with BAM which allows us to discuss any issues we encountered beforehand to reach an agreement quickly and easily.
One of the impressive features of the building is the array of skylights installed throughout the large atriums, constructed at high level from scissor lifts. Due to the amount of services in the kitchen and servery areas, we set the ceilings out on the floor to be able to coordinate with the services above. Furthermore, the vast amount of services created a tight ceiling void making it difficult to install the hangers. However, we were able to get our suspended ceiling system installed efficiently due to the low level setting out which we transferred up.
As usual in the construction of educational buildings, the music rooms tend to be a challenge. We worked closely with BAM and the acoustician to ensure the right decibel ratings were achieved. The design of the rooms with angled corners was an interesting new feature to contain sound within the rooms. In addition, an extra MF ceiling & acoustic suspended ceiling tiles were installed for extra sound proofing. The accumulation of all these details allowed the rooms to satisfy the acoustic testing, reaching above the target dB ratings.
The Derby School project was a success for all concerned and we believe this is down to the good site communication between BAM, ourselves, and other trade subcontractors. To complete the project on time and in a safe manner throughout the pandemic is a credit to all involved. We believe the delivery of the school went smoothly and had minimal disruption showcasing another successful project working with BAM.