news archive

August 2005

Construction of state of the art campus nears completion

The new Institute of Molecular Medicine and Cancer Research Building in Leeds is nearing completion. Based on the St James Hospital site, the facility forms a major part of the University of Leeds Research Campus.

Halcrow have been responsible for the complete design of the highly complex sustainable building services installation. This represents approximately 40% of the £16 million construction costs. Halcrow engineers have been working closely with users of the building to present a services solution in tune with their specific working practices.

Senior building services engineer for Halcrow, Janet Beckett said: “Halcrow provided an innovative low energy interactive ventilation system which responds directly to the users’ needs. This offers them considerable savings on fan power use which has traditionally been a very wasteful aspect of laboratory design.

Heat energy is provided using waste heat from the steam generated by the site wide CHP (combined heat and power) plant effectively reducing carbon emissions.

The building has three separate IT networks which will serve over 200 scientists and software managed multiple level access system.

There is a standby generator to provide dedicated power to the buildings essential uses, specifically the experimental process equipment in the event of a mains failure”.

One of the service users, D. J Oakes said: “The Halcrow team were excellent in providing all our requirements. They made helpful suggestions and provided solutions to problems when they arose, with always prompt and thorough responses”

Janet Beckett added: “Halcrow have an extensive track record of providing sustainable and innovative low energy building services solutions for both large and small projects in the commercial private and public sectors. This project looks set to be another great success for Halcrow and all involved”.

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