Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering has completed significant piling works on a new engineering building for the University of Sheffield.

The new facility will provide almost 20,000m3 of world leading teaching facilities for the University in 2015.

The works which began in July are part of a £49 million construction contract awarded to Balfour Beatty as part of the largest ever capital investment made by the University for its estate.

The site is situated above a weak substrate of coal and rocks which required Balfour Beatty Ground Engineering to install large diameter bored piles up to 15 metres long to provide enough support for the building. Then, a reinforced concrete liner wall with ground floor slabs up to eight metres deep were installed before three kilometres of concrete piles were poured.

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Above ground work will start next month on the six-storey building which will include specialist teaching laboratories, lecture theatres, flexible teaching rooms, library and learning resources.

Drawing on its expertise in delivering iconic buildings, Balfour Beatty will install bespoke triple glazed units with clear, translucent and opaque unitised panels which will provide high levels of thermal performance. This will be encased by an aluminium exoskeleton designed to represent a discrete ‘cellular automaton’ model which is studied in the field of engineering and used by the University to describe how the microstructure of steel changes during processing.

The new engineering building is the latest in a series of large university schemes which Balfour Beatty has been awarded including the Student Union project for the University of Sheffield, as well as the refurbishment for the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures for the University of Edinburgh and the Pontio Arts Centre for Bangor University.

The project is due for completion in summer 2015.

(CD/MH)