Academic excellence in Bristol

Sir Robert McAlpine is working on a scheme in Bristol that is set to transform the city – and hopefully the future of some of its youngest residents

If tower cranes on the skyline are the bellwether of a city’s financial wellbeing, then Bristol certainly seems to be enjoying a period of rude health. A stroll through its centre sees plenty of them standing sentinel over Bristol, reminiscent of the ship masts that once graced this great port city.

Wander a few hundred metres in the direction of the city’s Temple Meads railway station and there is a cluster of three cranes, busily feeding one of the first projects in a wider redevelopment scheme that is likely to anchor the region’s built environment sector for years to come.

It is here that a team from Sir Robert McAlpine is working on the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus, a major development for the University of Bristol. The scheme will provide academic facilities alongside commercial space, public realm improvements and student accommodation.

The university’s vision is to transform its relationship with businesses and communities across the region and further afield, becoming a catalyst for the creation of a world-renowned innovation district.

Key to this vision is the delivery of the Temple Quarter Academic 1 (TQA1) Building – a six-storey, 38,350 square metre reinforced concrete-framed structure that is set to become the centrepiece of the overall scheme. Once in full operation, it will provide academic facilities to 4,600 students and 650 university staff, and serve as an innovation hub for businesses across the South West and beyond.

“It is an exciting project to be involved in,” says Peter Munn, project director at Sir Robert McAlpine, as he gazes out over the busy site. “This is a substantial development for the future of the University of Bristol and it’s great to be playing our part in its delivery.”

It has taken a while to get to this point in the delivery process. Thanks to various outside factors such as the Covid pandemic and tightening economic constraints, the team has benefited from a three-year lead-in period through a preconstruction services agreement. This has enabled all stakeholders in the project team to refine and evaluate the development to such an extent that the client has labelled it a ‘no-change’ scheme – meaning that as far as the University of Bristol is concerned, there will be no diversification from the design, even down to the smallest detail.

The building itself sits on the former site of a Royal Mail delivery and sorting office that took advantage of its location directly alongside Temple Meads railway station. This reinforced concrete building was demolished in a separate contract, leaving a legacy of a backfilled basement box with piled foundations in situ.

This forced the TQA1 team to develop a technically tricky ground engineering solution for the new building. In those areas where piles were required to thrust through the backfilled basement, specialist contractor Bachy Soletanche drilled 1,100mm diameter cores that themselves were then backfilled using lean mix concrete. The 900mm diameter continuous flight auger (CFA) piles were then installed through this concrete and into the underlying alluvial clay rockbed at depths of 28 metres beneath. In total some 550 CFA piles have been placed across the site.

“We carried out tests and surveys to locate the piles for the Royal Mail building and were able to avoid those. There were pours of 500 cubic metres of concrete for the pile caps – around 9,000 cubic metres in total,” says Munn.

Once the piles and ground floor slab were installed the team could move on with the frame. The building has a predominantly reinforced concrete frame, although this was not always meant to be the case. “We carried out some value engineering work and looked at the frame. It had initially intended to be a steel-frame building because of the large spans involved in some areas. We reevaluated and recognised there was lots of redundancy designed into that. By reducing the grid size to 7.5 metres we realised we could maintain its design requirements and also build using reinforced concrete,” explains Munn.

Working alongside concrete supplier Heidelberg Materials (formerly Hanson), the team has used Hanson EcoCrete – a low-carbon concrete that replaces some of the mix’s cement content with ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS). This reduces the overall embodied carbon dioxide within the concrete by around 250 tonnes, and helps minimise the building’s carbon footprint.

“The GGBS content means there are longer cure times for the concrete. We worked through several mix designs but we estimate we have saved around 2,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide by using EcoCrete in the frame and groundworks,” says Munn.

Where the longer spans are required, the team has installed 1.5 metre-deep, 15 metre-long steel trusses to accommodate them. These account for the 170 tonnes of structural steel Elland Steel Structures installed within the building and are supported on steel columns which are clad in a sleeve of concrete, helping them tie in with the rest of the concrete frame solution.

“The client wanted to keep the overall look of the building ‘honest’ and true to its construction. The soffits are all exposed and we used simple plywood-faced formwork to cast the bulk of the concrete,” explains Munn.

But that doesn’t mean the team hasn’t embraced offsite construction and prefabrication. The frame is set to be clad at ground floor level in 370 precast concrete panels weighing in at 3.5 tonnes and manufactured by Irish specialist Techrete. Above this, German producer FKN Facades is installing 1,270 unitised glazing and cladding panels. Running through the building are bright yellow steel statement stairs that have been fabricated offsite by local specialist Taunton Fabrications and lowered into position. On a breezy day in Bristol it is difficult not to admire the skills of the crane operator and installation team.

“We have embraced offsite construction as much as we can on this scheme. With the number of [unitised and precast] cladding units – well over 1,000 – we have the repetition required. Our mechanical subcontractor NG Bailey has also prefabricated much of its work too,” says Munn (see box, below).

There is still some way for the Sir Robert McAlpine team to go before the TQA1 Building opens its doors to its first cohort of students – handover is anticipated in summer 2026 with an eye on the start of the academic year. But it promises to be a shining focal point for the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus when it does.