Welsh aluminium fabricator Dudley’s Aluminium has secured a contract worth more than £800,000 to work on the University of Plymouth’s new engineering and design complex.
Working with BAM Construction, the fabricator will install Kawneer capped curtain walling, windows, commercial doors and Louvreshield window frames, as well as automatic doors, at the new Engineering and Design Facility at the university’s main city centre campus.
The low energy use facility will accommodate the School of Engineering, while also providing additional space for the School of Art, Design and Architecture.
The facility will feature large, flexible teaching spaces, modern equipment and resources to reinforce the university’s reputation as a centre of excellence for engineering and design research, teaching and learning.
The university has already started work to convert the existing Babbage Building and it is estimated that conversion of the block, on the western edge of the university’s main campus, will be completed by the start of the 2023/24 academic year.
The project is to create a new home for the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics and additional space for the School of Art, Design and Architecture.
It forms part of an ambitious £100million campus plan for the university which is expected to continue with demolition of the Brunel Building laboratories to make way for a “Civic Heart/Urban Park”.
Details of this proposal are expected to be finalised in 2022, but for now the university is concentrating on adding a new-build section and refurbishing the original 1970s Babbage building, creating more than 10,000sq m of research and teaching space.
This will then contain enhanced and modern specialist equipment, aligned to staff research and expertise and enabling the university to engage with regional industrial partners.
Designed by internationally award-winning architectural practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, the engineering and design block received conditional planning approval from Plymouth City Council in late 2020.
Construction firm BAM’s Western team has been selected to deliver the development, BAM has already built three buildings for the university.
Colin Shorney, managing director at Dudley’s Aluminium, said: “We are excited to be working with BAM Construction on the University of Plymouth’s New Engineering and Design Facility. We have worked on a number of brilliant projects in the educational sector and it is great to be a part of another development that supports innovation, creativity and collaboration.”
Since 1993, Dudley’s Aluminium has offered clients full in-house design and production facilities, completing many successful and prestigious projects within the education, health, commercial, retail and defence sectors throughout the UK and Channel Islands. Dudley’s reputation for quality has been recognised with several industry-related accreditations. The company is CHAS accredited, Constructionline registered and certified to manufacture “Secured by Design” products.
