introduction
The Ribbon Court project involved working with Mansell Construction Services in order to help them meet their BREEAM obligations. Ribbon Court is a new intercultural extra-care sheltered scheme for elderly residents, operated by Ashram Housing Association in Coventry. The development contains 50 self-contained apartments, along with communal activity rooms and a restaurant.
challenge
Mansell was required to ensure that the Ribbon Court facility achieved a BREEAM Very Good rating. This meant that the whole development needed to be designed with long term sustainability firmly in mind at all stages and across all aspects of the site (including energy efficiency, obtaining materials from sustainable sources, construction management, health and wellbeing of residents, public transport links, land use and ecology & pollution control).
solution
We helped Mansell to clearly understand the BREEAM requirements, and provided guidance on how the development could gain sufficient credits to achieve the required rating. An initial design meeting was held and the best solution to achieve the Very Good rating was agreed. Following the design meeting, we created a step-by-step summary of the requirements needed to achieve the BREEAM credits, and provided on-going advice to enable Mansell and their client to feel fully confident about how to implement the proposed design solutions.
outcome
Ribbon Court achieved the BREEAM Very Good rating for a Multi-Residential building via a number of different avenues. The building is highly insulated, with an air tightness level which is better than the Building Regulations requirement. This ensures that heat is not able to leak from the building, keeping the overall energy consumption to a minimum. The communal areas are heated via an Air Source Heat Pump, a form of low carbon technology which also helps to reduce carbon emissions. Mansell were careful to ensure that works during the construction period met all the BREEAM requirements. As the property was to be used as a home for elderly residents, particular care was taken to ensure that the individual apartments were designed to be comfortable and provide a pleasant environment in which to live.
"Sustain provided Mansell with a one-stop-shop service with regards to energy and environmental compliance assessments. They were able to ensure that across the development these requirements were met by providing advice and information to support design decisions. At all times they provided an excellent level of service and we are looking forward to working with them again on further projects."
Simon Lipinskis, Mansell Construction Services Ltd
