Bell rings for Morgan Sindall's £19m Hull school project

The new build and refurbishment project at St Mary’s College involves the construction of a new 70,000 sq ft teaching block, designed by Capita Symonds.

It will also comprise 12 humanities classrooms, six sixth form classrooms, 14 state-of-the-art science laboratories, 7,500 sq ft art and design space, a food technology classroom, two ICT suites and a learning resource centre.

As a specialist sports college, St Mary’s College will receive a new 11,840 sq ft three court sports block with three sports science classrooms, an all-weather pitch and multi-use games area.

The new campus building will also include a new professional-standard 300-seat theatre with a fly tower, allowing stage scenery to be raised and lowered during performances. This is one of the first to be installed in an education environment in the UK.

Due to the large amount of glazing and south facing frontage in its design, the new building will use thermal modelling and solar controlled glazing to ensure a steady internal temperature.

Morgan Sindall completed work on the first two schools to be delivered under the Hull BSF scheme in late 2011 - the £33m Archbishop Sentamu Academy and the £38m Winifred Holtby and Tweendykes School.

The firm is also currently delivering on three further school construction contracts, worth a total of £64.5m. Kingswood College of Arts, Oakfield Special School and Andrew Marvell College are close to completion.

The work forms part of Hull’s £400m BSF programme, which will see the delivery of 17 new schools by the end of 2014.

The previous Labour government’s £55bn BSF programme was scrapped by the coalition government in 2010, but in some areas ongoing work has yet to be completed.