Chamberlain Halls will stand 20-storeys high and house 726 bedrooms. It will be built on the site of the existing Eden Tower which is being pulled down. It will also include three linear ‘finger’ buildings along the Church Road site in Edgbaston.
Balfour Beatty will use building information management (BIM) in the planning phase to provide value engineering and has committed to delivering the project in just 100 weeks. Construction is scheduled for completion in the winter of 2015.
Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering will carry out piling with Balfour Beatty Engineering Services, through its Modular Systems+ facility in Wednesbury, providing bespoke pre-fabricated mechanical and electrical units housing ducting, cabling and pipe-work for the building, which can be installed quickly on-site further reducing the construction time, the company said.
Furniture for the bedrooms and communal areas will be supplied by Footprint Furniture, another Balfour Beatty company.
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The building will meet the EPC ‘A’ category for energy efficiency through the use of brick cladding for insulation, a copper rainscreen and glazed curtain walling to reduce heat loss.
Award of the contract comes on the back of recent wins for Balfour Beatty at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Bangor and the University of Exeter as well as for specialist student accommodation developers Urbanest and Unite.
University of Birmingham director of estates Ian Barker said: “This project forms an important part of our drive to make the university more environmentally sustainable – building on the 20% reduction in carbon emissions that we have achieved to date. We were impressed by the work which Balfour Beatty has done in this sector and are delighted to have appointed their experts to carry out work on the new Chamberlain halls of residence.”
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