The Sir William Henry Bragg Building was designed and built to create an Integrated Campus for Engineering and Physical Sciences (ICEPS) at the University of Leeds for Leeds University Campus Developments, with ADP as Architects, has been featured in the winter edition of the prestigious Mineral Products Association Concrete Centre’s Concrete Quarterly Magazine.
PCE was appointed by Main Contractor BAM Construction Ltd to deliver the detailed design from RIBA Stage 3 carried out by the companies in house structural design team, manufacture and assembly of the five-storey superstructure and basement utilising their HybriDfMA Frame System approach.
PCE’s Design Director Chris Powell has commented:
"The project enabled our structural design team to exploit the full benefits of our ‘kit of parts’ approach, to ensure that all of ADP’s requirements for the performance of the building were met including the stringent vibration criteria, as well as the environmental aspirations and high-quality visual appearance required."
Over 1,750 off site-manufactured components were delivered to the site which had difficult access on a planned just in time basis and erected by the PCE site team of just 22 highly trained, multi skilled operatives, in just 32 weeks. Craig Billyeald, PCE’s Senior Project Manager said:
"The project clearly demonstrates the benefits of PCE’s sophisticated in house control systems tracking the progress and ensuring high quality of the individual components commencing at the design stage, through manufacture to their final assembly position onsite."
The Concrete Centre in publicising this winter edition of Concrete Quarterly, has called the project, "a precast palace of science", a most fitting commendation for this project which is just an example of PCE’s extensive involvement in the higher education and scientific research sectors including the 2021 RIBA Sterling Prize winning Kingston University Town House, a Biomedical Research Centre at Warwick University, the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Research Centre at Cambridge and the Electronic Engineering Laboratory at Royal Holloway College.