FPM Delivers £1.8 million School Extension

FPM was awarded a two-phase £1.8 million contract at Sherbourne Fields School.

Phase One involved extending an existing classroom, creating two new classrooms, a sensory room and hygiene suite and relandscaping a courtyard to improve a play area. In Phase Two we converted unused space between the main school building and external classrooms into a statement main entrance, incorporating new offices, meeting rooms, a toilet, and café.

Coventry based Sherbourne Fields, is an all-age special school for pupils with a wide range of needs and FPM has felt privileged to have worked on several refurbishment projects at this inspirational learning centre over the last few years.

The passion for providing a safe, nurturing, and supportive environment is clear from the projects we have been involved with in the past, which included refurbishing the swimming pool and changing rooms and repurposing classroom spaces.

On this extension project, we worked alongside Coventry architects, IDP, and were the sole contractor on site, responsible for taking the project from design to completion.

Key elements of the build:

• A classroom extended to create a larger teaching space.
• A classroom constructed within a courtyard complete with sensory room, hygiene suite, and an improved outdoor soft play area.
• Previous offices converted to create a spacious secondary classroom.
• Previously unused space converted into four offices, two meeting rooms, a toilet and café area.
• The offices and meetings rooms were half partition, half glass to allow light in and create airy spaces to work.
• Meeting rooms installed with the latest interactive whiteboard technology.
• All rooms equipped with card entry system to fit in with existing school security.
• Ramp and guard rail installed to overcome difference in levels between the two existing buildings.
• Statement entrance created by installing vertical cladding. The cladding system is usually installed horizontally and so we had to design an innovative fitting solution to achieve the desired effect.
• Outside landscaping, resin surfacing to the external ramp and tarmacking for aesthetics and most importantly easy access.

Several challenges arose along the way, including inflating material costs and the usual unpredictable UK weather, but despite these, we were able to handover the new build in time for the start of the 2023/2024 academic year.

Shivaun Duffy Moriarty, Head of Sherbourne Fields said, “We love our new spaces, the additional classrooms which were very much needed are modern and spacious creating exceptional spaces for our children to learn and thrive in. The new entrance and office area have made our building much more secure, and I can’t believe what was once an uninspiring space between two buildings has become such a fabulous space to work in. The school has been transformed and has already made a huge difference to the children, our visiting families, SLT and our admin teams.”

Shivaun continues, “Working with FPM has been a pleasure. They have delivered a high quality build and were great at keeping us updated with progress, working closely with us to resolve any issues and handling any changes we requested.”