Seventy days from start-on-site to finished – that’s the challenge offsite construction specialist Terrapin successfully tackled with a new building to expand the nursery facilities for children of students and staff at Reading University. The new Little Learners day nursery on the Whiteknights campus was manufactured in Terrapin’s Milton Keynes factory and assembled on site during the summer break to create the 678m2 single storey building, ready for the new academic year. Terrapin is a leading UK producer of high quality panelised and volumetric buildings for education, healthcare and other sectors.

The new Terrapin building replaces facilities used by the Reading University Students’ Union’s day nursery since 1999, and enables their Little Learners to grow from 40 to 94 places. It provides a safe and secure environment for children aged from three months to five years, and offers the latest resources for child development. The University’s architects, the AED Practice, briefed Terrapin to match the adjacent Carrington Building, with a flat roof, pale render and grey powder-coated windows and doors. Terrapin also accommodated the architects’ specific brief which included items such as a waterproof membrane roof blanket, cladding to match adjacent buildings, an integrated courtyard canopy and sun pipes. The resulting building has two wings, linked by an entrance corridor, with the entire structure based on 28 bays 2.568m wide and either 6.168m, 8.568m or 12.336m long meeting the aesthetic stipulation. Terrapin has also undertaken to plant broad leafed trees in the campus grounds to offset CO2 emitted by the lorries that delivered the building in a ‘flat pack form’ on the 150-mile round trip between Milton Keynes and Reading. This limited the number of deliveries to 20 - and the resultant CO2 emissions.

With production of the Unitrex units for external walls, floors and roof in full swing at Milton Keynes, Terrapin moved on site for three weeks of foundations and other ground works. Once site works were complete, the units were delivered and craned into position. The eleven-week construction phase also included installing the external cladding, partitioning the interiors using plasterboard on galvanised steel studs with acoustic insulation in the voids, installing suspended ceilings, flooring and decoration, electrical and plumbing services, and landscaping.

Terrapin Contracts Director Warren Eyres says the summer construction schedule was tight, with work on the site – registered with the Considerate Contractors Scheme – starting only after examinations were over, and a completion deadline before the new academic year. “The result is further proof that our building systems have significant advantages over traditional methods of construction, especially speed and minimal disruption to neighbouring activity,” he says.

A leading UK provider of offsite construction solutions, Terrapin has been in the business of permanent and temporary solutions for 60 years. Factory building is an efficient method of construction, because panels or modules are built under controlled conditions on a production line, assuring fine tolerances and the highest quality standards. Panels or fully fitted modules are transported by road to site, where they are simply lifted into position by crane and connected to services. Compared to conventional building, the Terrapin process reduces time on site, cuts the number of deliveries and is virtually unaffected by weather considerations. Importantly for a site where disruptions must be kept to a minimum, the offsite construction approach creates much less noise and interference to the day to day operation of the campus and its occupants.