Cambridge Faculty Building

The University was replacing an ageing teaching block with a new four-storey building accommodating lecture theatres, teaching spaces and academic offices for around four hundred students.

The brief was specific on three points: a BREEAM Very Good rating as a minimum (BREEAM is the UK’s environmental rating for buildings), gas-free heating, and operation within tight running cost targets aligned with the University's net-zero estate strategy. Sharman Grimwade was appointed at the early design stage to lead the full building services design across heating, electrics and water, working alongside Hollings Architects and Kier Construction as the main contractor.

Three constraints made the project unusual.

First, the site sat between two listed buildings, which limited any external plant and ruled out the obvious roof-mounted heat pump array we would normally specify. Second, the University's existing low-temperature heat network ran along one boundary, offering a connection but also adding coordination complexity.

Third, the BREEAM rating was lifted to Excellent during early stages, which tightened embodied-carbon and water-use targets significantly without an increase in the construction budget.

We split the heating strategy. The lower-temperature requirements of the new building are met by a connection to the University's heat network, with a top-up bank of air-source heat pumps located within a contained acoustically-treated enclosure on a single-storey utility wing where they don't impinge on the listed setting.

MVHR provides ventilation throughout with passive cooling on academic offices and active cooling reserved only for the lecture theatres where occupancy demands it. On the electrical side, a coordinated LED scheme with daylight-linked controls keeps the lighting load low across the open teaching spaces, and a 44 kWp solar PV array on the roof contributes the renewable share toward the BREEAM target.

A smart BMS gives the University estate team full visibility of every plant item from a single dashboard, which was central to securing the operational performance commitment after handover.

The building is achieving a measured 38% energy reduction against the Part L baseline through its first year of occupation.

BREEAM Excellent was awarded post-construction, and the project was delivered to the original commissioning date despite a four-week delay during ground works. The University has used the same engineering design framework on two further commissioned buildings since.