The 2008 Building Services Awards took place at Grosvenor House Hotel in London on 23 June 2008. BDP was this year’s big winner, with its Leigh Technology Academy in Dartford scooping three awards and Peter Brickell, a young engineer, being highly commended in the ‘New Achiever’ category.
After winning awards for ‘Project of the Year’ and ‘Best Use of IT’, Leigh Academy went on to win the evening’s final award – ‘Best of the Best’ – chosen by the judges from amongst all the winners, for the highest overall achievement in building services engineering this past year.
The award citation read: “The Building Services Awards this year attracted perhaps the best ever range of entrants and winners. BDP’s work on Leigh Technology Academy stood out nonetheless, as one of the most innovative undertakings the judges had seen.
BDP delivered a project that not only responded to the educational needs of the students of the academy but also provided exceptional environmental performance within strict budgetary constraints.
The judges said that the use of many different tools to access, physically and remotely, the IT infrastructure of the project, on top of the school’s desire to be an exemplar of sustainable building posed a technological and architectural challenge that the BDP team had met with much panache.”
Leigh Academy is a groundbreaking 1500 pupil school, specialising in technology and ICT. The school consists of four colleges, all under one roof. The school is brimming with innovation, delivering approx. 65% of the carbon emissions compared to DfES benchmarks and a reduction of 30% against Part L.
In addition to being highly sustainable, the school’s advanced ICT network fully integrates all building systems, bringing the ‘intelligent building’ to life via a converged network backbone. On this information backbone sits video conferencing, security ccTV, voicemail, data files, energy monitoring, temperature logging, access control, intruder detection, class change, cashless vending, school attendance records and results from the school sports day.
The school’s Vice Principal, Mark Poulter, said: “The school is a tremendous environment for learning and working…..Kids deserve a good school and they’ve got it ,more than that they welcome it, making them feel special, it reaches their mind, body and play… it’s a very special space”.
James Warne, environmental engineering director at BDP, said: “The success reflects well on the truly interdiscipline scheme that incorporates architectural, structural, landscape, lighting, acoustic, sustainability and environmental engineering working in unison in a way that exemplifies BDP’s ethos & culture.”
Finally, in the ‘New Achiever of the Year’ award, Peter Brickell, a building services engineer, was highly commended and was first runner up. Peter joined BDP in 2005, and he impressed the judges with his work on sustainable development and 3D design.