Ensuring the delivery of a specialist learning environment that precisely meets Department for Education requirements.
Leeds Mathematics School (LMaS) is a specialist sixth-form college that provides top tier maths teaching for pupils aged 16-19 within state-of-the-art educational facilities. Its creation involved the complete refurbishment of an Victorian bank in the heart of the city, to convert it into an eight-storey centre of academic excellence.
The £15.4 million project was undertaken as a partnership between the Department for Education, The Gorse Academies Trust (the end user), and the University of Leeds.
Teams from Gleeds’ Leeds and Manchester offices provided technical advice and cost management support during the feasibility, procurement, pre-construction and construction stages, as well as managing defects. Our input enabled the client to meet all of its ambitious goals for the facility, while overcoming the challenges of redeveloping a historic building in a city centre location.
The existing building, which had most recently been occupied by a building society, was comprehensively stripped out and rebuilt internally. The client’s vision was that the school should feel like a university environment, preparing pupils for the step up to higher education.
Key spaces include:
- a double height lecture theatre
- classrooms
- science laboratories
- a library
- a fitness studio
- a café
- study and social areas, and
- a lower ground car park.
Following taking occupation of the building, additional intrusive surveys were undertaken by the contractor. This led to a redesign of internal spaces to ensure compliance was met and aligned with the survey information. In addition to advising on these changes, we carried out value engineering exercises that achieved savings on the unplanned costs that resulted from the redesign. To ensure expenditure remained under control into construction, we worked with the client and quantity surveying (QS) teams to monitor contractors’ requests for additional budget.
As the programme schedule was very tight, we worked with the DfE and arranged for an early works instruction to be undertaken under the pre-contract services agreement. This mitigation ensured handover of the building took place just one week after the original contract completion date, despite statutory undertakers delaying the switch-on of power to the site.
Sustainability was a key consideration. We undertook a consequential improvements exercise to identify ways to enhance the period building thermally, which included improving insulation to all new elements. In line with the client’s electric-first approach, All the required infrastructure was installed so that the end user could connect into the Leeds PIPES line, a low carbon sustainable district heating network, in the future.
Due to its location, space at the development site was tightly constrained, with no external areas. We worked closely with the contractor to manage the phasing, and held regular review meetings to rephase certain parts of the construction programme to address resource and site capacity issues.
The establishment of Leeds Mathematics School (LMaS) is a key step in the UK government’s plans to roll out specialist maths school across the country. The converted building welcomed its first cohort of 70 students in the autumn of 2023.