THE LOW CARBON BUILDING, SOUTH LANARKSHIRE COLLEGE

The BREEAM ‘Outstanding’  Low Carbon Building was a new build edition to the South Lanarkshire College campus delivered by CCG Specialist Building Services (SBS) in 2016.

The Low Carbon Building was the first in the UK to achieve an ‘Outstanding’ rating from the BREEAM 2014 new construction assessment process, excelling in every category (Management, Health + Wellbeing, Energy, Transport, Water, Materials, Waste, Land Use + Ecology, Pollution and Innovation) and achieving an overall score of 92%.

To ensure that the project and process embedded sustainability in line with the College’s ethos and policies, from the outset and throughout, BRE (Scotland) was appointed in an advisory role as a project partner whilst the building itself was designed by architects, Austin Smith Lord.

The project team explored the design in detail, deploying a passive design strategy of ‘remove demand, reduce demand, deliver efficiently‘. This involved utilising the thermal mass of the building to reduce the demand for energy; introducing enhanced technological efficiencies such as the use a ground source heat pump and solar PV and an exemplar approach to flood risk mitigation and water resource usage including via rainwater harvesting system and SUDS drainage.

A separate BMS system to control and monitor the building services was also installed and is linked back to the main campus’ system to ensure ease of operation for the Estates and Maintenance teams. All monitoring results are then displayed for staff, students and other stakeholders, encouraging positive ‘energy’ behaviour and demonstrating the success of the building.

What stemmed from this attention to detail was a two-storey, steel frame-block capable of providing enhanced teaching and learning facilities for up to 8 classrooms as well as learning space for local and business communities that achieves a 100.8% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the 2010 legislative emission requirements and will be ‘Carbon Neutral’ building lifecycle.

Client:
South Lanarkshire College

Contract Value:
£4.5 million