University appoints contractor to £29m campus building

Property group Kier has been appointed to design and build a new £29m teaching facility for University College Birmingham.

The project is the latest phase of the University’s £100m redevelopment of its Jewellery Quarter campus and will see Kier build a new four-storey, 8,500m² undergraduate and postgraduate teaching building.

As well as teaching space, the facility will also include an indoor running track, lecture theatres, learning areas and teaching staff offices. A new 160-space multi-storey staff car park will also be built on the site.

The first and second floors will house eight classrooms, and a total of three 100-seat lecture theatres, with the third floor home to a 35-metre indoor running track to assess speed and performance for UCB’s range of sports courses. The top floor will also house a new, state-of-the-art gym, which will be open to the University’s higher education students.

There will be a large, relaxing ‘living room’ featuring not only a coffee shop, but a US-style diner with a centrepiece pizza oven that overlooks the courtyard and provides outdoor seating.

The new building will also house hired@UCB, UCB’s careers, employability and enterprise service, as well as the placements and apprenticeships teams.

Work is due to begin on site later this month, with the building due to open to students for the 2019 academic year.

This contract is the latest Kier has been awarded in Birmingham, where it delivered the first building to be constructed on the Snowhill development in the city centre as well as Goodman’s £12m Eastside Locks development.

It is also working with Birmingham City Council’s Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust on the £40m mixed-tenure housing scheme to provide 300 homes in the area.

Mark Pausey, Kier Construction Central managing director, said: “We’re extremely pleased to have been appointed to deliver this new teaching facility for University College Birmingham, which makes up a key part of its wider regeneration plans for its Jewellery Quarter campus.

“We’ve a strong track record in providing higher and further education schemes across the country and we’ll be using our expertise in this sector to deliver the new next phase of UCB’s plans.”

Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Ray Linforth said: “We are committed to continuing to improve the student experience and we look forward to working with Kier to build a fantastic building with superlative learning facilities where students can flourish.”