Grand Avenue Primary School, Kingston

Keegans were commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames to reinstate the previously unused east wing of Grand Avenue Primary School and extend the current facility to allow the school to expand from a 2-form to a 3-form entry school.

By renovating the existing 1960s block and linking this building to the existing school, these refurbishments have provided the school with six new classrooms. A further 3 classrooms have now been added with the new extension. Additional natural lighting and ventilation has been brought into all of these classrooms with a series of ‘roof light’ windows improving teaching spaces without additional distraction.

Also included in the work was the provision of a new nursery and new changing facilities for the school swimming pool.

In order to produce facilities that the school could be proud of, on time and to budget, we carried out a feasibility study and presented a number of options to the client and key stakeholders such as the Headteacher and Governors. In order to evolve the design further we held a number of consultation meetings, presentations and neighbourhood events to take on board stakeholder needs and expectations within the parameters of the budget.

As this project was within an already existing school environment we had to carefully consider the health and safety impacts of the construction site and the continued operation of the school with minimum disruption. We therefore maximised time on site within the school holidays.

We were able to add value to this project by conducting an acoustic performance review of the existing classrooms and also the thermal upgrade of the existing hall thus reducing long term maintenance costs.

The project formed part of RBK’s Primary Education Programme (PEP).