Hilton completes its first eco-friendly hotel

The first of hotel chain Hilton’s eco-friendly buildings have been completed. The Hilton Garden Inn in Luton is a £16m mid-market scheme comprising 157 guest rooms, restaurant, conference facilities, meeting rooms, bar and gym.

The project was undertaken under a design and build contract by Gleeson Building, now GB Building Solutions, through its Oxford GB development joint venture with Oxford Hotels.

HCD provided full building control support to the scheme, from formal plans appraisal for the prefabricated proposals to full fire officer consultation and site inspection.

Work on site started last April using a prefabricated, modular system from Caledonian Building Systems which enabled the erection of the structure on-site to be fast-tracked to just 24 weeks.

The building’s renewable energy biomass boiler burns sustainable woodchip or wooden pellets to reduce fuel consumption. This and the insulation provided by the prefabricated units helped the building achieve a Very Good BREEAM environmental rating.

Andy Lowe, HCD director, said: "HCD's in-depth knowledge and experience with Caledonian’s unique modular system ensured that the project ran smoothly from a plans assessment perspective alongside a tailored site inspection framework.

"Our willingness to go beyond the prescriptive code approach and work from first principles was highlighted by our involvement in the innovative provision of biomass and the use of deep boreholes for surface water drainage."

The Luton scheme is due for completion by the end of May.

Hilton plans to open a chain of 20 such hotels across the UK and Ireland in the next four or five years.