Kents Hill Infant School – Roof Refurbishment

Key Facts:

Client Name: Kents Hill Infant School
Location: Benfleet, Essex
Type of client: Infant Academy
Services provided by M+C: Building Surveying | Architectural Design | Planning Services | Procurement | Project Management | Funding Application
Value: £462,503
Contractor: Acclaim Contracts Limited

Background and Issues

Kents Hill Infant Academy is a school in the Benfleet area of Essex. The school is performing well and gained a grading of “Outstanding” at their most recent Ofsted grading. The buildings, built in the 1960s, are suffering from degradation and a program of refurbishment is underway to address this.

Kents Hill approached M+C to support them in preparing a bid to gain CIF funding to replace the badly failing flat roof coverings. The roofs had most recently undergone a program of refurbishment more than 20 years ago. At the time of first contact, they were showing extreme signs of deterioration and failure. Consequently, the school was suffering from water ingress, which caused damage to fixtures and fittings as well as rendering areas of the building unusable.

M+C completed a full condition survey with photographs to form the basis of a funding bid. This firstly found that the roof surfaces were showing signs of blistering and de-lamination. In addition, the roof decks were completely flat meaning that rainwater was unable to run away towards the guttering. This was causing surface ponding and significantly contributing to the water ingress issue. Secondly, core samples proved the insulating layer to be sodden, meaning that it offered no thermal insulation at all. Thirdly, the existing poly-carbonate roof lights had cracked and were leaking. They were also very easy to remove, posing a significant threat to the security of the building.

The impact of these issues meant that the school were spending much higher sums on heating the buildings than necessary. Additionally they regularly had to make costly patch repairs in an attempt to prevent the situation from worsening.

Solution

The M+C plan to address these issues comprised of the following:

To overlay the existing roof deck with a new 3 layer bituminous felt system which carries a 25 year insurance-backed guarantee.
To upgrade the insulation in order to comply with current regulations and to improve the thermal performance of the building
Bauder tapered insulation was specified to improve the roof fall and aid drainage
To replace the roof lights with new modular Bauder roof lights which are much less fragile, and offer better thermal and light transmittance performance
Provide new lightning protection across the roofing area

M+C completed a full tender process for the works. Three contractors responded of which the most competitive was from Acclaim. The CIF application process was successful and work commenced on site in July 2017. The M+C project management team were careful to schedule the works so that the most disruptive elements took place during the summer break. The project was complete and a fully watertight building was handed over to the school during the second week of the new school year 2017.