Wates Construction has commenced work on a new £17 million secondary school in Rochdale.

The Edgar Wood Academy will be operated by the Altus Education Partnership (Altus), a multi academy trust.

The project was procured via the Department for Education’s (DfE's) Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) Framework and is the first of six MMC projects to hit site that Wates is undertaking since its appointment to the framework in January 2020.

Designed by architectural practice, Sheppard Robson, the 900-pupil school for 11 to 16-year-olds, which has a footprint of 6,720 sqm, is being developed in response to increased demand for secondary places following the expansion of local primary schools and will be ready for September 2022.

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It will comprise a three-storey teaching block containing 23 general classrooms and 34 specialist classrooms, a sports hall, sports pitches, soft and hard play areas, car parking and drop off areas.

At the same time, Wates has worked closely with the DfE to develop temporary accommodation to house The Edgar Wood Academy's first 120 Year 7 students when they arrive in September 2021. The accommodation will be located on a site about three miles away at Hopwood Hall College.

As Dave Saville, regional director of Wates Construction North West explains, there have been massive benefits of working through the MMC framework in terms of health and safety and pre-construction collaboration.

He said: "We are using our Prism Offsite Manufacturing facility, which offers many advantages, including substantially reducing waste on site and lowering the carbon footprint of both our construction activities and the operational use of the buildings.

"Additionally, we have been moving forward on this project since August 2020 and have fostered a really strong collaborative relationship with complete integration of all the parties involved the highways department, the local council, the DfE, our own team and Altus, who from the start, had a very clear idea about how they wanted the building to look."