BSF News

What’s been going on

Set up initial site offices and welfare

Initial site fencing set up to separate site from School. 200m of fencing has been erected to enclose the end of the lower football pitch where we will be creating a contractors’ car park and setting up our main site offices during February. Until these offices are ready we have set up temporary welfare facilities beside the youth club. These will be moved as soon as possible and all site traffic will then use the right of way past Butterworth Hall.

Set up site access road

Where possible we are using recycled materials. The stone capping is crushed stone from demolition sites and we will be using planings (stone removed when they take up road surfacing to do roadworks) to surface the new road.

The area where the new school temporary accommodation will be set up is being cleared. These will be your new English Classrooms and Library.

Approximately 900 tonnes of topsoil will need to be removed. We will then need to provide capping material to seal over the existing material before forming hard standings and the new play area.

Preparation for the alteration works within the main school buildings, to give access to the new accommodation, has also started.

Over the next month we will be carrying out these works outside school hours to ensure there is no disruption to the school.

Coming soon

• Earthworks to form the new play area and English classrooms.

• Temporary accommodation.

  This is currently being manufactured at our contractor’s workshop on the Wirral.

• Foundations

  Once the earth works are complete we will be constructing concrete foundations for the temporary classrooms.

  Each foundation has been designed to spread the load from the building above such that the pressure exerted on the ground is no greater than 155kn/m² (i.e. 15.5 tonnes/m²). If the ground were granite this could be up to 1000kn/m²!

  The depth of the foundation is that required to carry the load imposed by the building entirely within the concrete and be deep enough to avoid frost (this makes the minimum depth of any foundation 450mm.)

  For the 1.0m square foundation in this example the foundation would have to be 0.5m deep.

  Due to the changes in level across the area where the new accommodation will be positioned some of these foundations will extend up as columns out of the ground. Where this is done, we will have the opportunity to store some of the topsoil we are removing in order that it can be reused later when the area is finally landscaped following completion of the new school.

• Drainage

  In tandem with the construction of the new play area between the existing school and the new accommodation the main drain link for the new building will be laid. To minimise the risk to the workers installing the drain and limit the excavation close to the existing school, this has been designed to be as shallow as possible whilst still providing the necessary slope from the new building site around the sports hall to allow the water and waste to flow away.

Regards,
John England – Carillion Project Manager