Campus Whitehaven

This was such an exciting project for the Story team and for the children and teachers as the new build project was bringing 2 separate secondary schools together to make one, servicing the areas of Whitehaven, Mayfield and St Benedict’s.

The new school was built on 3 levels and also included a swimming pool and sports hall, top of the range sensory areas for the disabled children of the former Mayfield School and many large open plan classrooms.

This was a revolutionary project as we made the decision with the client to prepare all of the woodwork for the project, including skirting boards, architraves and window boards, at Story Offsite Spray Facility at our head office in Carlisle. All woodwork was undercoated and sprayed up to a finish so that it only required a final coat once fitted at the site. This had massive benefits to the programme as we needed less bodies on site and so saved us time and allowed the flow of the site workforce more efficiently.

In spite of this we still had difficulties working alongside the delays left by other trades on the site but we came up with a comprehensive system of marking up areas clearly for the client showing where and what was to be actioned. This assisted the client greatly when it came to getting the finished project over the line.

Health and Safety on the site was dealt with by way of yellow and red card system by the main contractor. We also had to comply by their mandatory PPE which consisted of long sleeve hi viz, glasses (at all times) gloves, hard hat & boots. Housekeeping got extremely difficult towards the end of the job as there were rooms full of materials which had been delivered to site to install which were stored in areas we needed to final decorate-again as above our drawings to the contractor assisted with this by planning ahead of where we were going to be working so the contractor could clear the areas out ahead of us arriving to carry out our final decorations.

The use of colour from PPG Paints on this design made out for a very challenging project, which we love at Story, but ultimately has made a bright, airy, cheerful and cohesive environment in which both schools can exist as one. The client, teachers and children loved the building which was successfully handed over in December 2018 and was officially opened by Princess Anne in June 2019.