Yorkon News Archives

05/12/2005 – Yorkon Awarded £2.8m Contract for New Adult Education Centre

Award-winning off-site construction specialists and Portakabin subsidiary, Yorkon, is to build a new £2.8m adult education centre for Lewisham Council.

Due for completion in Spring 2006, the new purpose-designed centre at Granville Park will regenerate a brownfield site and provide a range of facilities for the local community including a café, food studies laboratory, workrooms for art, woodwork, upholstery and metalwork, an IT suite, general classrooms, and offices. The building will also have a crèche and an outdoor play area for children. The project managers are Mace.

Designed by Cartwright Pickard Architects, the three-storey centre will have a contemporary architectural design, featuring timber solar shading to screen the windows on the south elevation, western red cedar cladding to bring texture and warmth to the building, and slate grey panels to two elevations to add further interest.

Yorkon will manufacture the building off-site and will crane 39 steel-framed modules into position in less than a week ready for fitting out, significantly reducing the programme time. Yorkon's work also includes demolition of several disused buildings on the site and completion of landscaping and car parking.

Commenting on the project, Councillor Alyson McGarrigle, Cabinet Member for Culture at Lewisham Council, said, "The state-of-the-art adult education centre to be built at Granville Park will provide the area with a valuable resource that will enable many local people to enrich their lives. The use of off-site construction techniques will mean the project is completed much faster and this more innovative method of construction will also satisfy our requirements for a high quality community facility."

Yorkon has a long history of delivering education buildings, from complete multi-storey schools to classroom extensions, and has recently launched a design for new school buildings in response to the Government's Building Schools for the Future initiative. These innovative plans have been developed in conjunction with Cartwright Pickard to maximise the benefits of off-site construction and introduce fresh, imaginative ideas to improve educational standards by providing inspirational facilities for staff, pupils and the wider community.

As part of Yorkon's commitment to innovation and the environment, a new whole life costing package has also been introduced. An industry first, this software tool is central to sustainable development, allowing specification decisions to be assessed over the life cycle of a building, helping designers and local councils evaluate the options available to mitigate climate change and reduce carbon emissions and running costs.