Client: North East Autism Society (NEAS)
Date/duration: December 2014 – January 2015
Value: £380k
Location: Newton Aycliffe
Working for the North East Autism Society (NEAS) we successfully completed the renovations to a disused building at the North East Autism Centre, the charity’s £9m educational facility in Newton Ayclifee, County Durham in December 2014 to extend a specialist training college to offer more vocational courses to people with autism.
The building will provide additional teaching space for Thornbeck College, a specialist training centre that offers tailored courses to people with autism aged 16 and over.
The completed refurbishment will enable the college to provide more vocational courses, including car maintenance, catering and woodwork, along with existing subjects such as hairdressing, floristry and textiles. There is also a training kitchen fully equipped to supply catering on site and training opportunities to the students.
The works included the full strip out and demolition of internal walls, M&E services, external windows and doors and finishes. The existing building was then re-modelled to include workshops, commercial kitchen, meeting room, toilets, IT suite, admin reception, car maintenance and full new M&E installation.
Neil Jukes, Managing Director of Northern Bear Building Services, said: “The full team have worked closely with the client’s team to deliver this project within a very tight 9 week programme to enable Thornbeck College to teach students in the new facility this January 2015.
The project was delivered as a design and build project to a very tight budget. The project was procured under a traditional tender process where Northern Bears tender sum of £600k was the most effective tender received. The project was then value engineered to a figure of £330k (the clients available funding) and was delivered for this sum.
