Flintshire Adult Day Care building by KIER

Hwb Cyfle Flintshire Adult Day Care Centre

Project value: £4m

Sector: Adult Learning

SME spend: 99%

SME Engagement: 99%

Local labour within 40 miles: 98%

School pupils engaged: 605

Apprenticeships created: 6

The site management team have been excellent throughout. They have dealt with any issues in a very professional manner with a high level of customer focus. They have also gone above and beyond to ensure the client received outstanding customer service."

Andy Topliss

Project Manager | Flintshire County Council

Replacing an outdated Adult Day Centre with a future proofed, state of the art facility.

Challenged with the need to move the centre to a flood-free location, while delivering a purpose designed environment suitable for adults with a range of learning disabilities, Kier have delivered a landmark building on time and within budget.

Flintshire County Council wanted to urgently replace an old outdated adult day care facility that had become very expensive to run and maintain.

Users of the facility have a varying range of requirements from learning disabilities to profound disabilities. This required a purpose designed facility which would create a vastly improved experience and assist the care team in offering the highest quality of care.

A collaborative approach was adopted between Flintshire County Council, Kier Construction and other stakeholders to ensure that the new facility would not only meet the detailed brief but also be flexible to accommodate future needs.

A key aim of the facility is to help users to live a fulfilling life, from helping them with daily activities to become more independent, to gaining employment and for people with profound disabilities, helping them to lead a better quality of life through structured activities. In doing so, family members and carers would be able to take some much-needed respite.

The building needed to be carefully designed to help staff to maintain safe working practices while safeguarding the dignity of users. These measures include larger toilets and changing facilities with hoists, sensory lights to aid stimulation and natural light throughout the building, along with larger doors and corridors for wheelchair access and turning.

The building’s running costs also needed to be taken into consideration through energy efficiency and renewable technologies.

The project had a strict budget of £4 million, and with a comprehensive list of requirements from stakeholders, it was evident from the start that an innovative design and value engineering would be required to deliver the project on budget without compromising the quality of the facilities needed.

The original site for the single storey build was on a red flood zone and would have required significant spoil removal.

In addition, the old facility had very expensive running costs due to the poorly insulated structure and out-dated mechanical and electrical installations. Reducing costs in use would be vital to free up resources to fund the provision of better care.

The new facility considerably exceeded the expectations of the stakeholders. By working with the National Resources Wales (NRW), Kier were able to relocate the build site from the flood risk area.

This reduced the amount of spoil removal from 4,000 to 1,100 cubic metres, the amount going to landfill and the associated transport costs. Overall, a saving of £350,000 was achieved and, instead, the retained spoil was formed into creative landscape features, transforming an otherwise flat site.

Throughout the preconstruction phase, the design team and Kier undertook affordability reviews, challenging the design as it evolved and obtaining competitive sub-contract tenders to ensure that it would not only be delivered on budget but also within the extremely tight deadline. The building was redesigned to an L-shaped layout which meant that there could be better use and delineation of outdoor spaces and creating a calm and tranquil community garden.

This also gave green fingered users an opportunity to utilise their natural gardening skills.

Significant investment has been made to reduce running costs by installing various renewable energy systems, solar control insulated glass, enhanced fabric insulation and low energy lighting.

The adult day centre, which is being managed by Hft, has thus been purpose-designed to meet the varied and often complex needs of adult users within a beautiful, practical and comfortable facility, fit and flexible for the 21^st century.

99%

SME spend

99%

SME engagement

9/10

Client satisfaction