Modernising the Main Tower at the East Coast College Campus.

East Coast College is a Further Education (FE) college which has campuses in Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. Following a six-month pilot area review in 2014, it was proposed that the merger of Great Yarmouth College and Lowestoft College would result in improved education and training provision locally. The colleges have now formed a Federation as East Coast College.

The colleges formally merged in the Summer of 2017 ready for the new academic year. East Coast College is a partner college of the University of Suffolk and the Lowestoft campus boasts specialist maritime and offshore training opportunities.

Dating back to the 1960's the main tower which formed the central part of the former Lowestoft College had become a familiar landmark within the town which could be seen for miles around. The building had with age began to decay quite badly with maintenance costs steadily rising due in no small part to its relatively poor energy efficiency & exposed profile to the North Sea. This was hindered further by the relatively high ratio of windows used within the structure.

We were first tasked with assisting the main contractor in removing the old cladding from the building in a safe and environmentally friendly manner. The old windows including their aluminium frames were then removed before being replaced with a smaller number of high energy efficient windows. The void created by this reduction was then filled with energy efficient cladding.

A number of the concrete mullions were removed in every room with external walls. We then created new walls where these mullions were removed. The new walls internally were created using metal stud-work, insulation and plasterboard. The external part was then covered in the new colour changing chameleon cladding. We then also removed a redundant plant room from the roof of the structure.

"The biggest challenge in this project was the tight deadline. All internal work had to be completed by the end of the summer holidays."

Cara George, Total Build

The majority of work was undertaken during the Summer holidays in order to minimise disruption to students. That being said the site did remain open to the public and working at heights brought its own challenges.

A large low level scaffolding platform was erected around the base of the tower as a main platform to work off. Because of the height of the building mast climbers were required to reach all areas of the building. These mast climbers had to be fitted into the building for structure and safety. This was done by drilling through the external walls and fitting the mast climber supports into the drilled holes.

The project was completes on time and within budget.