- Industrial & Advanced Manufacturing
Energy Centre
Creating an Energy Centre ready for the future
The University’s sought to have a dedicated 5th generation heat network supplying their North Campus buildings. This would provide heating and domestic hot water services to local University building stock utilising sustainable and energy efficient methods. The project will play an important part to enable the University achieve its long term sustainability and zero carbon goals.
Key facts
Client: The University of Manchester
Status: On-going
Location: Manchester
Services provided:
- Lead Designer
- Principal Designer- CDM
- Architect
- Principal Designer- Building Regulation
- BIM
- Technical Advisor
About the project
The construction of the Energy Centre is the main body of Work within the second phase of North Campus development, the first and ‘enabling’ phase having been completed. Other Works within this project include providing a new Mains Cold Water ring main to provide resilient water supplies and smart metering, a fire fighting ring main upgrade, and to incorporate latest technology and installations which will allow future energy recovery from building services and plant.
The proposed building location is to the south of the University John Garside building, on a currently unused part of the site. The physical site constraints influence the form of the proposed building. The internal functionality drives the designed vertical arrangement and massing: the ground floor is dense masonry construction containing heavy transformers within fire resisting walls and the roof level are lightweight open gantrys carrying the air source heat pumps which initiates the innovative heat creation process.
A key consideration when designing the building was gaining the support of the Manchester Planning authority. The building is in a prominent and publicly visible location, adjacent to the busy Mancunian Way. Negotiations with Planning led to the development of the cladding shroud formed of perforated anodised aluminium panels and associated back lighting for an enhanced aesthetic. Other considerations included the adoption of acoustic treatment, intended to mitigate the potential for plant created noise pollution.
The project remains on target to commence construction in the first half of 2026. A ‘sister’ project generated during the design development of the Energy Centre which is ongoing is the large scale plant replacement and reroofing works to the adjacent John Garside building.
The future vision is that the new Energy Centre development will enable phased expansion capability to include the other building of the University North campus including the Faraday Tower plot, Masdar and Ferranti buildings, and that the Energy Centre model could be replicated to serve other parts of the University campus in coming years.
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