coombes : everitt Your Sector Hercules Further Education Training Academy
Hercules Further Education Training Academy
Sector
Further Education
Client
Hercules Construction
Location
Nuneaton, Midlands
Project Value:
£4m
The innovative Hercules Training Academy in Nuneaton is seeking to create a regional hub of excellence for construction industry education. The project’s core mission is to inspire, train, and connect individuals entering and advancing in this sector, ensuring they are well-versed in the latest technological advancements in sustainability and ‘digital construction.
The 910sqm design prioritises a flexible, engaging learning environment, and consideration is given to repurposing an existing structure to meet sustainability and budgetary constraints. This transformative educational facility features informal learning spaces, study pods, outdoor learning spaces and social areas that captivate and involve students.
The Brief:
An active and inviting learning environment that offers flexible spaces that can be easily adapted to support a range of different teaching and learning styles.
The design also needed to incorporate facilities to support student well-being and comfort, indoor and outdoor learning spaces and residential accommodation to attract students from outside the region.
Key Challenges:
The chosen site had an existing portal-framed building to be considered for conversion as part of the project.
With tight budget considerations and rising industry and energy costs, planning for the longer term sustainability of the building was essential. In addition, flexibility and efficiency within the design were crucial to accommodate a changing curriculum and keep ahead of industry innovations.
Our Responsibilities:
Specialist Advice
Our Solution:
Utilising an existing building comes with challenges but we felt that by embracing and exposing the portal frame offered a fantastic narrative to the construction industry training centre and its purpose.
Our approach was to consider all aspects of its retention and adaptive reuse, including embodied energy, suitability, budget constraints, and flexibility.
The integration of service technology was a key consideration and coombes everitts Building Information Modelling (BIM) was central to informing and optimising the final design. With this we were able to drive value in the design and ensure that the different construction disciplines integrated smoothly. We were also able offer the Acadamy confidence in the future operation and maintenance costs of the building.
The impact of new technology on pedagogy is influencing educational building design and the way we see educational environments. Our final solution delivers an innovative multi-functional educational facility connected to an outside training area via a central circulation and break-out space.
Spread over two levels, the design offers informal and flexible learning environments, including both open plan spaces and variable room sizes, that can adapt to accommodate different teaching and learning styles as required. At the heart is a central hub with small study and meeting pods as well as dining and social facilities. Privacy and acoustics are sensitively incorporated, establishing a genuinely multifunctional environment for collaborative and reflective study.
The result is an inspiring and exciting learning environment that attracts but also engages students and promotes health, well-being and collaboration.
This flexibility in design ensures high utilisation of space, reducing the overall footprint and thereby reducing overall upfront capital costs. It also ensures that the learning environment can evolve and adapt to accommodate changing needs over time and avoiding the need for costly renovations.
With the challenge of attracting students from outside the region, some short-term residential accommodation was also incorporated into the estate by adapting a nearby office building into a series of self-contained residential units.
