The James Hornsby School – Safeguarding Improvements and new Front Entrance

Key Facts:

Client Name: The James Hornsby School
Location: Basildon, Essex
Type of client: Secondary Academy
Services provided by M+C: Building Surveying | Architectural Design | Planning Services | Procurement | Project Management
Value: £60,000
Contractor: MASC Construction Ltd
M+C Lead: Phil Ruffle

The James Hornsby is a Secondary school based in Basildon. The school is performing well, attracting a grading of “Good” on their most recent Ofsted inspection, and currently has around 812 students on roll.

The school wanted to re-organise the badly designed front entrance to the school, as well as re-model the reception area to create a designated conference room. Building on an existing working relationship, they engaged the services of M+C to drive the project forward.

To solve the problem of visitors gaining access to the school without being cleared by school staff, M+C’s Phil Ruffle and the architectural team designed the new entrance to filter all visitors to the reception desk, thus improving the school’s safeguarding measures. A dedicated conference room was created by re-configuring existing space enabling meetings/training sessions etc to take place without impacting on classroom availability. This valuable resource also enhances the school’s ability to generate revenue from their assets; something which is on every school’s agenda. Once the design had been agreed with school personnel, M+C carried out the procurement for the works, and completed a full tender process. MASC Construction returned the most competitive bid, and were duly appointed as the project contractor.

All works took place over the summer break, to eradicate disruption to learning. The project was managed from start to finish by the M+C team, and was officially handed over to the school on 1st September ready for the new academic year to commence.