Customer: Buckinghamshire County Council

Location: Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

Requirement:

Following the closure of a local privately owned pre-school centre, Buckinghamshire County Council identified an urgent need to provide before-school, day-care and after-school facilities for children in the community. A suitable site was identified on the playing fields at William Harding Combined School, and the Council set about finding a building supplier who could get full childcare accommodation on site before the end of the financial year.

Solution:

Kevin Inkles, Development Officer, Children’s Centres at Buckinghamshire County Council, says: “We quickly realised that a modular building was the best solution, given our very tight timescales. I was made aware of the nursery buildings Portakabin could provide and got in touch to find out more.”

The Council discussed its requirements with Portakabin, who recommended the Titan Building System as the quickest and most cost-effective solution to provide the quality of accommodation the Council required with the necessary short lead times.

The Titan Building System offers generous, open-plan interiors that are ideal for large nursery or classroom applications. To provide the floor area required by the Council for the new facility, another Titan building was linked to the Titan Building System, extending the already generous accommodation and creating a very flexible interior.

To meet all the requirements of the planned pre-school facility, Portakabin designed a building that incorporated a lobby, office, large store room, toilets for staff and visitors, a disabled persons’ toilet, children’s toilets with low partitioning, a wet-play area, and a main open-plan area. Buckinghamshire County Council chose terracotta cladding and red window frames to blend with the neighbouring school buildings on site. The building was delivered and installed before the Council’s end-of-year deadline.

The new accommodation provides high-quality facilities for children aged between three and five years old. The linked Titan building has double doors that can be closed off to provide scope for older children to join after-school activities in a separate area, which will be equipped with computers.

Portakabin enabled Buckinghamshire County Council to meet the requirements of its fast-track project by designing and delivering the building in a very short space of time. The efforts of both Buckinghamshire County Council staff and Portakabin helped to facilitate a speedy resolution to the problem.