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The event was attended by 80 alumni and friends of the College including past masters, the design team, consultants and Kingerlee. Kingerlee have had a busy few weeks reaping the success of a number of their projects. Structural Awards – Archive Centre at Waddesdon was short listed against a very strong international field. Aylesbury Vale Design awards- The new Arts block at Stowe school received a commendation and Waddesdon was announced as one of the winners. Concrete Society Awards – The new Kendrew Quadrangle at St John’s College , Oxford received a commendation and features over four pages in their November journal. Wood Awards – Waddesdon won the structural section along with the overall Gold Award. RIBA Awards – Both Waddesdon and St John’s College won their sections and received plaques and certificates to mark their success. The awards ceremony took place at the RIBA headquarters in London. The Kingerlee team on the Waddesdon Archive project scooped two awards at the prestigious Wood Awards. The Wood Awards is the UK’s premier architecture and furniture competition celebrating excellence in design in the world’s most sustainable material. Now in its ninth year, the Wood Awards is the most respected award for building and design in wood. The unveiling of the winners and award ceremony took place at the Timber Expo Exhibition, Coventry, 27th September 2011. The focal point of the new reading room at the archive centre was constructed from a furniture grade oak geogrid structure, unique in its design and construction. From a select short list of projects nominated across the United Kingdom Kingerlee picked up both the Structural award and the overall Gold Award. Two of Kingerlee's projects are to open for public viewing. The Old Fire Station refurbishment in George Street is part of the Oxford Preservation Trusts Open Doors Weekend. This project nears completion to provide a Crisis Skylight to offer homeless and vulnerable people opportunities to gain skills along with Aspire a social enterprise and a new arts centre for Oxford. At Pembroke College a £16.5m scheme, we are providing a site tour as part of the Oxford Briefing 2011 a weekend conference for building surveyors, facilities and estate managers, architects and construction professionals. Organised by local RICS members, the conference attracts delegates from across Southern England. We are anticipating in excess of 100 guests. The two buildings comprise 54no en suite study bedrooms along with a porters lodge and entrance facilities along with flexible office space to the upper floor. The traditional and listed stone boundary wall to the St Antonys site will be re-configured to accommodate a new entrance forecourt. A new energy centre for the scheme will be located in the existing and listed Hilda Besse building and will be carefully linked to the two new Gateway Buildings. This will also provide a new and upgraded system to the existing facility. The reinforced concrete framed building will be dressed with a facade incorporating stone and bronze cladding. Renewable energy is provided by ground source heat bores carefully inserted under the existing traditional Oxford lawned quadrangle along with solar panels placed at roof level. The exposed concrete finishes will act as a heat sink which complements the renewable technologies to provide sustainable and thermally efficient buildings. The emphasis of the house was to utilise natural materials of low-impact provenance that display traditional design and construction methods in providing a family semi-detached house, small two storey flat and a single storey maisonette. The materials utilised in the building structure such as aerated clay blocks, lime based plasters and renders reduce the risk of VOCs. The plastic membranes were replaced in favour of vapour-open insulating systems. The house avoids the risk of damp and mould build-up within the building fabric, thus reducing the risk of asthma and respiratory problems for building occupiers. The air quality is maintained by a maintenance free passive ventilation system. The principal construction system, NBT ThermoPlan uses an extruded aerated clay block which entraps air in pockets providing high levels of insulation within a single skin structure. The aerated clay blocks were externally clad in a Baumit render and internally with lime plaster. This composition achieves a U-value of 0.2. The clay block construction is supported by other natural materials including NBT Pavatex woodfibre, Thermafleece sheepswool insulation and wooden floor and roof members which combine to provide the dual pitched roof with a U-value of 0.11. This consequently greatly reduces solar gain during summer months allowing comfortable living space within the roof area. The Natural House emphasises attractive flexible urban living for a low-carbon future. Photo shows Kingerlee's Joint Managing Director Tony Woodward handing the new building keys to James Hulme, Director of Research for the foundation. The RIBA Awards have been running continuously since 1966 and are judged and presented locally. No matter the shape, size, budget or location, RIBA Award winning schemes set the standard for great architecture all across the country. RIBA Awards are for buildings in the UK by RIBA Chartered Architects and RIBA International Fellows. Winners will be considered for the RIBA Stirling Prize. Oxford City Council is working with Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, to redevelop the Old Fire Station, after a bid was awarded funding from the Government's Places of Change Programme. This is an exciting project for Kingerlee as we were involved in building the original fire station in 1896 and we are looking forward to reinventing it. The Old Fire Station will be home to a new Crisis Skylight centre providing education, training and employment opportunities for homeless and vulnerably housed people and a social enterprise, Crisis Skylight Cafe, open to the public. There will also be high quality, flexible spaces for artistic professional development and training, and for community groups to use to offer performance and visual arts events, regular classes and courses for the public. These spaces will accommodate an auditorium, a galley and retail space, and a creative workspace for artists and designers. The Old Fire Station opened as a working fire station in 1896 and remained the main fire station until 1971. The schools headteacher, Susan Tranter, laid a facing brick prior to a tour of the refurbishment by site manager Mick East. The £395,000 project includes a unique and distinctive barrel roof over the ICT building. The Alumasc Derbigum System provides a warm deck insulated covering, bio diverse planting medium and a seed mix with plug planting to provide the sedum vegetation. Due to the access constraints on this BREEAM project the team have procured a system to pump the roofing medium from large capacity tankers at ground level. The roof areas were then raked to an even thickness and planted instu rather than the more traditional sedum blanket. This environmentally friendly project also incorporates photo voltaic panels, air source heat pumps and a rain water harvesting system. The project will be completed for school occupation in September 2010. The oak diagrid structure was procured with a client brief of achieving a very high quality “furniture finishâ€. The European oak laminated beams were imported from France and clad with hand selected and finished locally sourced veneers. The exacting specification required CNC technology to achieve a machining tolerance of 0.2mm and craftsman fitting on site. Due to the sensitive nature of the materials the entire reading room structure is being constructed under a bespoke designed 25m x 12m sliding temporary roof. The project is due for completion late 2010. Given the high standards of the finish and quality the entire building is being constructed under a tented temporary structure with accessible sliding roof panels. Works are due for completion late 2010. The crane removal procedure required careful and close planning and liaison with the local authorities to undertake the works over a two day weekend road closure in the busy street of St Giles in historic Oxford. With the aid of a 250t mobile crane the Jost 158.6 tower crane was carefully dismantled adjacent to a four way road traffic management scheme controlling the busy Woodstock , Banbury and St Giles intersection. The final and smaller of the two tower cranes is due to be dismantled shortly and ahead of the completion phases of the project and client occupation for the 2010/2011 academic year. Kingerlee are committed to being a leader in advancing environmental and sustainability standards and processes in the construction sector. The Group, through its development company, applies commercial tests to prospective projects, considering for example not just the cost during production, but the medium-term cost and real carbon footprint, leading on to a view or measure of the whole life cycle impact of each proposal. Architect, BGS have designed the building to sympathetically fit within the historic college's setting. The project is located within the confines of a secluded listed garden set within the heart of the college campus. Piling and enabling works commence in February 2010 with the main contract due to start in June 2010. The largest of the 45mm thick glazed units were sized at 6.00m x 3.00m and weighed in at just less than 1 tonne per unit. Kingerlee's sub-contractor Solaglas installed the units with the assistance of one of the site's luffing jib tower cranes and a Glass Boy vacuum lifting set. The panels were carefully inserted between architectural pre-cast concrete panels to form the main entrance of the new Kendrew Quadrangle Building. The project is due for completion next summer. Kingerlee have recently completed the installation of eighty prefabricated glazed wall units on their £35m Kendrew Quadrangle project at St John's College in Oxford. Each unit, weighing in at 1600kg, is a composite structure built around a galvanized steel chassis. Externally, the unit is clad with Cumaru, a sustainable hardwood. The windows are double glazed with aluminium frames shaded with a stainless steel canopy. The design of each module has been carefully integrated into a sample bedroom unit and developed with the client team at Kingerlee's head office in Kidlington. The units are bolted back to the concrete frame of the building on pre-fixed threaded anchors which allow rapid installation. Internally, the units will be clad with oak joinery to form book shelves and window seats. Kingerlee and St John's College have recently Topped Out the £35m Kendrew Quadrangle Project in the centre of Oxford. The ceremony included representatives from the client, designers, Kingerlee and their sub-contractors who celebrated the completion of the roof structure with the insertion of a golden bolt. Sir Michael Scholar, the St John's College President torqued the final bolt with a golden wrench. The MJP designed quadrangle building is formed around a historic beech tree. The development which includes high quality study bedrooms, archive storage, library, restaurant and public areas is due for completion in the summer of 2010. Kingerlee have been awarded a £1.6m contract to undertake refurbishment of an existing building and provide new Art teaching facilities at the Stowe School, Buckingham. Kingerlee will be working with their Design and Build Architect Rick Mather. In a hard fought bid Kingerlee came out on top, seeing off competition from Linford, Beard, Marriot and Ashe. Work is due to start on site this August with completion anticipated for summer 2010. Kingerlee have secured a new £4.9m contract at the Oxford High School to re-develop the existing Girls Day School to provide a Library, School Hall, Dining facility, Drama Studio, Lecture Theatre and Admin Centre. Kingerlee fought off rival bids from Beard, Speller Metcalf, Kier Moss, Mansell and Bowmer & Kirkland. The project commenced on site in July. Kingerlee have recently installed a Mason Jack Flooring Systems at one of their College projects in Oxford. The system is designed to mitigate issues of sound transfer through concrete structural floors and is being installed between the college's gymnasium, music and events rooms, and [quiet] archive reading room. Rubber jacks were installed prior to a concrete screed topping being poured and jacked up once the concrete has reached its designed strength. Threaded rods were inserted for the winding process and the slab was jacked up to form an air gap between the screed and sub-floor of up to 100mm. 'Ball former' technology was used in the construction of a suspended concrete slab in a £4m home in Berkshire. Spheres made of recycled polyethylene were used to form the main slab including a large-span terrace. The slab is around 35% lighter than an equivalent solid floor, requiring less column support to achieve the required spans. It is thought that it is the first time the method, which uses technology from Swiss firm Cobiax, has been used on a domestic property on conventional decking in this country. Kingerlee recently installed the first of 68 bathroom pods at their £35m Kendrew Quadrangle project for St John's College in Oxford. The concrete pods vary in weight from 5.2t units equipped with disabled facilities, to 3.6t for the more standard student shower rooms. The units were manufactured in Vicenza, Italy at the Sterchele factory and shipped to Kingerlee's holding yard in Kidlington. This enabled day-to-day control on a 'just in time basis' delivery to the site, seven miles away. On 17th March representatives from Kingerlee attended the annual Cokethorpe Careers Convention to give students interested in construction more information about the industry. The school felt the evening was very successful and that a vibrant and stimulating atmosphere was created. Kingerlee have attended this event in the past and hope to be able to continue to support it in the future. Whilst excavating for the foundations and drainage at the site of a new house in Sonning, Kingerlee and archaeologists unearthed a trench, believed to date back to prehistoric times. After several hours of scraping soil by hand, large animal bones, medieval pottery and a number of struck flint flakes were uncovered. The area was previously the site of the Bishop of Salisbury's Palace which fell in to disrepair and was eventually demolished in 1574. The flint flakes are all waste flakes produced when flint was being worked into tools such as knives and scrapers. Some of the animal bones have been identified as horse bones, other bones would appear to belong to pigs and cattle, believed to have been slaughtered for food. It was also interesting to find a deer antler and a tusk that probably came from a wild boar. Soil samples containing seeds and pollen have been taken from the site for environmental analysis. This will help to define the age of the archaeological remains. Members of the Kingerlee and client teams were invited to attend the official opening of the recently constructed English and Media Centre at Wheatley Park School. Following presentations by the school the building was opened by Mr John Howell MP for Henley. Kingerlee assisted Exeter College in the erection and placing of an Anthony Gormley Statue [the creator of the Angel of the North] onto a building in the surrounds of the historic City of Oxford. It was placed on the skyline of the college, on the corner where Broad Street meets Turl Street. The operation required detailed planning and co-ordination in a busy and central area of Oxford. A mobile crane was used in conjunction with road closures following close consultation with Oxfordshire Highways authorities. The statue, a seven foot tall figure weighing in at around a half a tonne was carefully placed into position on the 15th February 2009, following which a ceremony was attended by Anthony Gormley, Exeter College and its benefactors along with members of the local community. Kingerlee Contracts Manager Sam Brown said 'It is a privilege to be involved is such a significant event in Oxford. We are currently working closely with Exeter College and are on site constructing a £5.5m student accommodation development for them'.
Kingerlee are pleased to announce they have been appointed as the preferred second stage bidder for a New £6m Archive Centre at the Waddesdon Estate, Aylesbury. The focal point in the scheme to be an Oak Grid Shell structure to the reading room and associated archives utilising passive ventilation design. Subject to final negotiations, the project is due to commence on site this summer. The construction of a purpose built hall enclosing a hydrotherapy pool with associated changing facilities. The new facility has a purpose built, link building to the original school, and the pool features a hydraulic ram controlled moving floor. Further to the successful completion of the enabling works in March 2008, the main construction works have now commenced on the construction of a new four- storey quadrangle building, around a large protected beech tree. Kingerlee Ltd are pleased to announce that they have recently promoted Glynn Biggins and Paul Hardy as Construction Directors, and Colin Botton as Commercial Director for their Main Contracting Division.
Kingerlee completed almost 3000 hours of training during the 2007/2008 training plan which expired on 31st July 2008. The new 2008/2009 training plan began on 1st August 2008 and currently contains 2300 hours of training. Staff Personal Reviews took place throughout October 2008 and further training requirements will be identified as a result of this.
The Investors in People Standard is a business improvement tool designed to advance an organisation's performance through its people. Our assessor selected a variety of employees from across the company to meet with him to talk about their time with Kingerlee and their experiences. He was impressed with the employees he met with, and was very pleased with Kingerlee's progress since his last visit two years ago. It is anticipated that we will be reassessed at the end of this year. Please click here to return to the top of the page. |
Kingerlee have held their annual company briefing at the Kassam Stadium, Oxford on 11th October 2011.
The RIBA have announced winners of the South/South East awards 2011. Kingerlee have scooped two awards for their prestigious projects at St Johns College Oxford and Waddesdon Manor, Nr Aylesbury.
Kingerlee are proud to have won a Considerate Constructors Scheme 2010 National Site Award for the Kendrew Quadrangle at St John's College, Oxford. The award is presented to the top 7.5% of the 7000 eligible sites that competed. The bronze award was presented to Darran Gammon and Glynn Biggins at a ceremony in London on 6th May. Well done to the whole of the site team on this achievement.
