Protected: Chichester Science Technology Engineering Maths & Higher Education Building

This project delivers a dedicated facility for advanced engineering, science, and higher education. It acts as a living lab for sustainability, achieving RIBA’s 2025 embodied carbon target while forging critical industry partnerships with organizations like Rolls Royce.

The STEM and HE project involved constructing a four-storey, high-quality build to provide dedicated facilities supporting higher education and the Automotive, Engineering, Science, and Digital curriculum. The new building incorporates a vehicle workshop, science labs, a lecture theatre, and an independent study centre for STEM students.

This project is a critical phase of the College Estate Strategy and campus masterplan, aiming to replace poor-quality buildings and enhance the college’s strong reputation. A key to its success is fostering genuine partnerships between education and industry, notably with Rolls Royce. The facilities are designed to reflect this emphasis on higher skills and collaborative employer engagement, creating spaces for specialist skills training, multidisciplinary working, and independent research. The goal is to create a distinctive, high-quality, and modern learning environment.

Client and Strategic Value

The primary value created for the client was a bespoke, high-quality facility that addresses the strategic need to enhance the STEM and Higher Education (HE) curriculum. This directly supports the College’s Estate Strategy by replacing a tired, redundant building and elevating the campus’s overall identity and profile.

Our resourceful thinking involved designing a structure that integrates multiple specialist functions—from a vehicle workshop to advanced science labs—into a cohesive, modern building, future-proofing their provision.

Community and Industry Value

The project creates significant value for learners, employer partners, and the wider community. For students, it provides industry-standard teaching and learning facilities, ensuring they gain relevant, up-to-date skills. For employer partners, like Rolls Royce (who run a partnership apprenticeship program), the building fosters stronger collaboration, allowing for higher skills training and research vital to new technologies, such as electric and hybrid automotive systems.

This elevates the regional skills base and strengthens links between education and local industry.

Direct and Economic Impact

The most direct impact is the creation of a 3825 m2 Gross Internal Floor Area (GIFA) facility for advanced engineering, automotive, science, and flexible teaching. Economically, this investment creates a distinctive and prominent identity for the College, helping to attract learners and employer partners and ultimately raising the profile of the region’s automotive and engineering provision.

It supports the development of crucial skills for new technologies, including the move towards electric and hybrid vehicles in the manufacturing industries.

Social and Environmental Impact

The building’s presence has a strong social impact by providing an improved learning environment that supports both specialist training and multidisciplinary collaboration. Stakeholders have noted the positive effect of replacing the old structure with a vibrant, high-quality addition, which enhances the overall campus experience.

Indirectly, the building aims to be a learning tool for best practice in sustainable engineering and construction, positively impacting the environmental awareness of future graduates.

Technical Expertise and Fabric First

Our technical expertise was critical in achieving a highly sustainable outcome, driven by a ‘fabric first’ approach. Engineers undertook a thermal/energy model to define targets, resulting in very high air tightness and low U-values that surpass current building regulations.

This focus on the building envelope ensures spatial efficiency and a permanently lower operational energy demand, aligning with the College’s carbon reduction goals and the DfE’s requirements toward the Government’s 2050 Net Zero target.

Carbon Reduction and RIBA 2030 Challenge

By signing up to the RIBA 2030 Zero Carbon Climate Challenge, we demonstrated commitment to future-aligned performance targets.

Through early embodied carbon analysis and careful material selection, the project achieved 634 kgCO2​e/m2, meeting the RIBA’s challenging 2025 embodied carbon target.

This was accomplished by specifying materials like 70% GGBS (Ground Granulated Blast-furnace Slag) in the foundations and floor decks, using an electro-arc furnace steel frame, and integrating low carbon energy systems like all-electric air source heat pumps and photovoltaics.

Furthermore, the building serves as a learning example for the College’s engineering curriculum.