The three-storey, L-shaped building on UCL's Preston campus is providing students returning to college in September with the latest in information technology learning facilities. Nine fully equipped computer teaching rooms each with more than 20 workstations are supported by staff rooms, maintenance sections, administration areas and technical laboratories - one including a printed circuit board etching tank.
The £800,000 installation includes a DX air conditioning system for the teaching rooms using ceiling-mounted cassettes fed with refrigerant from the roof-mounted condensers to provide cooling or heating as required. For maximum comfort and efficiency, each room has its own individual temperature controller.
Other areas are naturally ventilated and heated by perimeter radiators supplied with hot water from three energy efficient gas-fired condensing boilers. These are located in the rooftop plant room, which also houses water storage tanks and pumps.
An extensive data cabling network:
Hills also installed the extensive data cabling network, which provides both a copper local area network and a fibre optic link to the university's main data highway. Data and power points are included in dado trunking running around the perimeter of the teaching rooms.
The electrical installation:
The electrical installation uses a three-phase main panel board in the ground-floor switchroom to feed local single phase distribution boards via two busbars. Each teaching room is supplied by its own distribution board to ensure continuity of supply to other areas in the event of an overload.
The contract, which also included lighting and fire alarms linked to an inductance system to warn deaf occupants of a fire, was awarded to Hills' Liverpool Regional Centre by main contractor Ballast Construction North West. The project was completed on schedule this summer ready for the building to open at the start of term in September.
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