New Technology Plans for the New Build

My role in the BSF Project at City of Leicester is now focused on the provision on New Technology in the new building. I am currently involved in a series of meetings with Northgate Managed Services, who will install and manage the ICT provision for the first 5 years.

I gave a presentation to our Colleges Leadership Team last week, outlining my current thinking on this. Below is one of the slides detailing provision for the standard classroom:

You can see the full presentation here.

Not everything is decided yet – too many unanswered questions. However, the basic plan is taking shape, and I’m hopeful that the provision will suit staff and students pretty well. Its certainly a lot better than our current setup!

BSF Building Work Starts

After much wrangling, the build phase of our BSF project at the City of Leicester College finally stated up in April of this year, and is scheduled to be completed by October 2013.  Below right you can see the first steels going up for the Business and the Design & Technogy Hub.

Digging Commences – April 2012

Work in Progress – June 2012

 

Visualisations of The City of Leicester College New Building

We have received some 3D visualisations of the current plans for The City of Leicester College from Miller Consortium (see the post “Latest Floor Plans – circulated for discussion”).

These begin to give a much clearer vision of the character of the proposed new build.

Vehicular Approach to the new building

Below are some more views – click on the thumbnails to get a better look of the current design for TCOLC!

Plaza Approach	Entrance	Foyer Section
Dining Terrace	Vehicular Approach	Interior Views
Overview	Ariel View

Latest Floor Plans – circulated for discussion

After some initial feedback from our staff, Miller have produced a first draft of the proposed new school building.

The decision was made to place the new school at the “Wyvern” end of the school plot.  This decision along with the need to build around existing structures has dictated the shape of the new build – a capital T with 3 additional wings placed diagonally from the “down stroke”, to catch the best of the sun.  The proposed structure has rooming arranged over 3 floors, although 1 floor is “lower ground” and is much smaller than the other 2.

I have attached the architect’s draft floor plans.  These plans will be discussed next week in faculty meetings, and comments fed back to Miller.

Staff this week have also been asked to complete a “pre-occupancy” survey, to gauge their opinion of our current situation.  If the rest of the staff respond anything like mine, there will be many “poor” and “inadequate” responses!   Our present buildings are crumbling away and present many obstacles to good teaching and learning.  The sooner we start building the better!

TCOLC SK001 Rev A Lower Ground Floor Plan

TCOLC SK002 Rev A Upper Ground Floor Plan

TCOLC SK003 Rev A First Floor Plan

TCOLC Accommodation Schedule

Despite some recent scaremongering in the local press, our BSF bid has been accepted by Government and the College is now fully engaged in the process of developing and updating plans and designs for the new build.

The College plans continue to centre around a total rebuild of the school – the new building catering for 1200 11-16 students and a further 370 sixth-form students.  We are currently working on the accommodation schedule – the number and size of all the classrooms and facilities. Below is a little sample of the schedule for the maths faculty.  The full draft accommodation schedule can be viewed as a separate pdf.

This is very much a draft and is currently being chopped and changed daily (hourly?).  It does, however,  give an idea of the complexity and detail that needs to go into the plans. I can imagine there will be quite a lot of horse-trading over the next few weeks as the plans get condensed into the space afforded by our funding envelope – roughly 12000 square metres.

Leicester BSF Phase 2 Update

Leicester City’s plans for  BSF phase 2 have now been presented to Government and will be discussed at Cabinet on 14th December 2009.   City officials are very hopeful that the plans will be passed.

This is good news for the City of Leicester College, as we are next in line to be rebuilt.   Once these plans are passed by Cabinet,   the College will have just 16 weeks to reach a Stage 1 Submission – detailing the project’s scope, elevations plan, outline proposals and cost estimates.

After what seems like an age waiting for BSF, things are set to start moving very fast indeed! (fingers crossed xx)

 

 

 

Leicester BSF Update

A quick update of the present state of play:-

Phase 1 of Leicester City’s BSF project was recently completed ahead of schedule and on budget.  The City Council are now gearing up to deliver the remainder of the project as quickly as possible over the next 3 years.

The City’s overarching Strategy for Change for phase 2  is “very near readiness for submission to Partnership for Schools”.   The sections still needing updating are SEN, Inclusion, Access and Diversity, which are all due to be completed by the end of this month.

There have been some tricky negotiations recently around student numbers to be included in the strategy, as trends suggest secondary school numbers will continue to fall over the next five years, before rising sharply.   These negotiations will have a big impact on the City’s BSF project as the Funding Allocation Model centres on  projected student numbers.

If the Strategy for Change is accepted by PfS, then our College will most likely be completing a New Project Request towards the end of November, with the design phase commencing soon after that.

There is also a possibility that The City of Leicester College will be designated a Private Finance Initiative, along with Crown Hills School.  If this happens, we will need to complete the New Project Request by the end of next month.

Whilst the College’s own plans are dependant on the City Council’s Strategy for Change being accepted by PfS, The City of Leicester College is expecting a funding envelope of around £19.4 million, to be used to finance a complete rebuild of the school.  Under current plans, nearly all of our present structures will be demolished with the exception of the Design block.  This space would be converted into Business Units, bringing commercial companies onsite and adding a new dimesion to our Business and Enterprise specialism.

It looks like BSF phase 2 is gathering momentum, so watch this space for future BSF news and updates!

“Read the rest” for a quick glossary of BSF jargon used in this post..

A Review of our original Plans (circa 2005)

The following plans were drawn up four years ago (when it looked like phase 2 might come along a bit sooner than it has!).  I thought I would post them up to show new staff (and remind old ones…) what point we had reached before things were shelved for a while.

The plans are now a little out of date.  The adjacencies were not finalised at the time, and indeed some of the faculties on the plans no longer even exist!

Pairing Faculties (2005)

What comes across clearly are the main ideas of paired faculty space arranged around a central hub of shared space and resources.  This  is still very  much the direction we are moving in.

The Adjacencies Plan (2005)

The next diagram is a full site plan.  The new buildings appear behind Wyvern, starting on top of the mobiles and stretching out onto the playing fields. The Gill building and most of Wyvern would be demolished and either laid to grass or used as car park space. One idea at the time was to keep our more recent buildings, ie Gill Science block, Sports Hall and Design block, as a way of getting more square footage for our money.  It was planned to use Gill Science as space for an outside agency to be brought onsite.

Original Site Plan (2005) - Full site

The following plan is a more detailed version of the new buildings, as envisage in 2005. The shared areas, like dining halls, library, theatre and administration appear in the central area.  Complementary faculties were to be paired and emerge like spokes from this central hub.

Site Plan 2005 - detailed view

These plans were more about concept, adjacencies and basic outline than actual detailed design, and were still fluid at the time.  However, we can  catch a glimpse of our new school, and identify many of its key aspects and features.

BSF Champions Group – Inaugral Meeting

Each school in the local authority has appointed BSF Champions and these are due to meet for the first time on 30th June 2009.  The group consists of:-

Mike McPherson – Leicester LA

Phil Keeling – Ashfield
Kim Kent – Babington
Liz Logie – Beaumont Leys
Tony Tompkins – TCOLC
Claire Madigan – TCOLC
Nicola Anderson – Children’s Hospital School
Jo Davis – Crown Hills
Edward Mee – Hamilton
Freda Ward – Keyham Lodge
Jessica Hill – Moat
Francis Doherty- St Pauls
Virginia Ursell – Westgate

Hopefully by the end of the meeting, Claire and I will have a better idea about what we will be doing in the coming weeks and months!

BSF Champions Appointed

The BSF Champions at City of Leicester College have now been appointed.  Claire Madigan has been selected to represent Gill staff and I (Tony Tompkins)  have been selected to represent Wyvern staff.  We will both be attending the BSF Champions Group for Leicester City LA, which meets for the first time later this month.

Details of what exactly the role entails is still vague, but is about getting involved in the BSF project from a teaching and learning perspective, and communicating ideas, possibilities and updates to the wider staff and student body.  There was also mention of visiting other new schools within the LA, the country and abroad.

I’m really please to have been selected and am looking forward to the challenges ahead.  I’m aiming to keep this blog updated with all BSF related information, so pop back regularly to find out the latest news!