The Building
Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms is a digital library which is part of Newcastle University. The library opened in 2016 in a former office building and offers 550 study spaces, 220 desktop PC’s and numerous individual quiet and group study spaces.
The Project
The Project was carried out over 2 phases each comprising 2 floors of study space while the remainder of the building remained in operation.
Phase 1
This phase encapsulated the refurbishment of the 1st & 2nd, also in this phase we installed new full height heating mains, ventilation risers and domestic services mains within an enclosed riser which stretched from basement plantroom to 4th floor but could only be accessed from the basement and 2nd floor. These services remained unconnected during this phase.
The 1st and 2nd floors were stripped out entirely & new ventilation, perimeter heating, in-duct heater batteries were installed. The perimeter heating was connected to the existing boiler plant/distribution to provide heating to these floors between phases.
New WC facilities were also provided to both floors including new sanitaryware and new above ground drainage.
This phase of works was completed on time without incident.
Phase 2
In this phase of works we refurbished 3rd & 4th floor study spaces as per phase 1 but this time all services were connected to the new rising mains which had been installed during phase 1. This was followed by connecting the 1st and 2nd floor onto the new mains once we made them live.
The Ground floor had been refurbished by others prior to the building opening in 2016 however we updated the WC’s so all floors were identical in provision.
The majority of the works in this phase was the replacement of the building’s central plant whilst keeping the building operational.
We installed all new plant, air handling units, boilers, pumps, plate heat exchanger in a new plantroom meaning all existing plant remained operational until we were in a position to switch over onto the new plant.
Over the period of 3 weekends we switched all systems onto their new plant ensuring all were commissioned, chlorinated, balanced etc within the weekend.
We finally removed the air handling unit, chillers (retained and relocated into a new dedicated acoustic enclosure), boilers, pumps, water heaters and associated pipelines and ventilation from the basement plantroom.
The project was completed on time and to the Client and student’s satisfaction.
