ISG have been appointed main contractor for a new school development in Bishop Stortford by Hertfordshire County Council.
The Avanti Grange Secondary School will serve the new Stortford Fields and St Michael’s Hurst communities and will offer 1,200 puplil places.
The school is to be over a 11.4 hectare site stretching across either side of the A120 road with the school on one side and the playing fields on the other side.
The scheme which was procured via the Pagabo Capital works framework will see ISG construct a two-storey concrete frame structure with brick facade. The southern zone of the split-site development will house the main school campus, which has a linear form incorporating a central full-height glazed spine to link classrooms, break out and communal space. There are also plans for a sports hall, floodlit multi-use games area together with car parking and drop off areas. A large attenuation swale – a pond structure – will also be formed to provide natural drainage and encourage biodiversity. Solar panels will also be put on the roof to provide energy.
The northern campus zone access will be by a 30-metre span steel footbridge over the A120. There will be five grass sports pitches across three large terraced areas. To level the undulating terrain a cut and fill programme will be used with excavated material forming the terraces for the new pitches.
Richard Skone, ISG regional director said: “The scale together with the logistical complexity of the new school marks this project out as a keynote regional scheme that will give a positive legacy for the new communities and will serve for many generations. This project is representative of significant investment in education facilities for this thriving part of Bishop Storford and together with the use of the Pagabo framework maximised procurement efficiencies bringing this project to site quickly”.
An initial intake of 180 students is planned for September 2023 although it is planned to open the school temporarily on the site of Avanti Meadows Primary School in September with spaces for 120 children.