On a Wednesday afternoon in early August, Alistair Shuttleworth was on his way home when his phone rang. He was waiting for a train on a noisy platform in west London, and the call turned out to be an urgent request for a change to the design of a school he was building. Not some minor tweak or a new partition, but an entire block that had to be reconfigured to accommodate a dining hall.
Ordinarily, to get a building design or a major alteration signed off would take months. Sometimes as long as half a year. But this was no ordinary project.
The moment he hung up, Shuttleworth began moving science laboratories around in his mind. Eight of them would have to be relocated to make way for the dining/assembly area.
He travelled to King’s Cross station and jumped on a train to Leeds. By the time he arrived there three hours later, the new design had been drawn up, discussed with his team, finalised and emailed out. A few days later, on 11 August, Block B of the new school building began to rise near London’s grim monument to a modern tragedy: Grenfell Tower.
As project manager, Shuttleworth was in charge of building a temporary school for almost 1,000 children whose lives had changed forever on 14 June, when a fire engulfed the 24-storey apartment block, killing a presumed 80 people.
Several children from the Kensington Aldridge Academy (KAA) died in the blaze, others were traumatised, and their school, at the foot of the tower in North Kensington, had to be abandoned. To build a new school that would open at the end of the summer holidays would require nothing short of an engineering feat.
The fire that changed so many lives: Grenfell Tower smoulders as investigations begin (Credit: iStock)
The orchestra
A week after the fire, contractors were appointed to build what would become known as KAA2, a temporary school located in a permanent structure nearby. Portakabin came onboard on 27 June and went straight into the design. There was no time for traditional brick-and-mortar construction.
Portakabin installs modular buildings ranging in size from a small office to a fully-functioning, £20 million hospital, complete with operating theatres. It builds the modules offsite, transports them and assembles them like Lego blocks. While managers like Shuttleworth were used to tight deadlines, the KAA2 project would prove to be “absolutely unprecedented”.
It was agreed that the new school would be handed over in mid-September, allowing just nine weeks for the construction. KAA2 would have to be built to meet stringent regulations that apply to permanent buildings (including electrics, water supply and fire safety) but in a fraction of the time.
“It was very, very challenging,” says Shuttleworth. “But it was achievable, as long as we hit all the milestones we set.”
He says that hitting these milestones meant building and maintaining momentum to the “drumbeat” of modules being delivered. At least seven arrived each day. Some days saw as many as a dozen being dropped off. Shuttleworth was the conductor responsible for the drumbeat. As long as it continued, the orchestra kept playing.
With special council permission, the site operated up to 12 hours a day, at times with up to 150 workers preforming various tasks. Shuttleworth’s orchestra rumbled with the sound of flat-bed delivery trucks streaming in, the foundations being poured and the modules being bolted together. The steel frames clanked, the composite panels thudded into place and the cranes whirred from dawn to dusk.
What at first seemed like a spacious site was soon jam packed, as the six blocks were assembled, eventually covering an area of 7,500m2. The busier the site got, the less space there was for a single off-key note.
The "fastest school ever built" takes shape as modules are assembled (Credit: Portakabin / Mace)
Stepping up
“The Grenfell Tower fire was in the national consciousness. It was all very recent and very raw for a lot of people,” explains Shuttleworth. “It was a very special project. There were 150 people on site but none of the normal arguments. Everyone was working with a common purpose.”
He says that 85 new modules were manufactured (to boost available stock) and those responsible for their delivery “moved heaven and earth”. People were pulled in from across the business, the manufacturing facility in York operated seven days a week, and “everyone stepped up”.
Instead of 11 months, it took UK Power Networks just 23 days to power up the building with a new substation, which required almost five tonnes of cabling across the site. Water and sewerage pipes were handled by Thames Water, turning around orders in as little as 19 days.
Shuttleworth says decisions that would normally require weeks of emails were made on the spot.
“We said: ‘nobody goes home until we find the solution,’ and 99% of the time it was the right decision,” he recalls. Shuttleworth insists this was only possible because of the team he was working with, people like Jen Vain and Tony Shaw from Portakabin, alongside colleagues from Mace construction.
“It was a hugely emotional project to work on,” says Phoebe Leach, Mace’s project manager for the school. “This is a real testament to what you can do when every member of a team is pulling in the same direction.”
Portakabin’s product design manager, Paul Blackwell, says that, compared to similar-sized buildings, the construction of KAA2 was the fastest the company had ever achieved. The school has called it the “fastest school ever built”.
A school that feels as "normal" as possible. (Credit: Portakabin / Mace)
Pushing boundaries
Blackwell, a veteran member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, says what made it all possible was the pre-engineering of the modules. The design and offsite procurement of the structural frames and panels allowed for the school to be assembled in record time.
“We didn’t have to engineer solutions from scratch,” Blackwell explains. “The product was pre-engineered 200 miles away from the site. That’s the ingenuity.”
Blackwell, who leads a team of engineers, says their production lines are inspired by the automotive industry, producing high volumes of highly standardised components.
For the KAA2 project, a total of 210 modules, some as long as 12m, were used. Where necessary, walls were removed to create bigger spaces. Most of the facilities were kitted out offsite.
Blackwell says the system allows modular construction to compete with traditional construction on cost, but to complete projects of similar size in half the time. Quality control is maintained at the factory and the need for many of the subcontractors usually on site is eliminated, reducing the risk of delays or mistakes (Oxford University’s Saïd Business School estimates that 90% of the world’s infrastructure projects are delivered late or over budget). The building of modules is not slowed down by bad weather, Blackwell adds, and can run concurrently with the laying down of foundations, which is what happened with KAA2.
Two years ago, an IMechE report identified modular offsite building as a potential solution to the UK’s housing crisis. It called on government to provide more incentives to encourage growth in this sector. This month, the Architects’ Journal said modular construction is becoming “increasingly attractive to a sector already facing labour shortages – a problem that is only going to worsen when free movement comes to an end”. It suggested “this could be construction’s Ford moment, industrialising the housebuilding sector”.
But, as a recent Economist report pointed out, the construction industry is slow to change and adapt to new technology (“While we are all using iPhones, construction is still in the Walkman phase”).
Blackwell remains optimistic.
“We are extremely proud and honoured to have responded to the tragedy,” he says. “The message to young engineers is that your ambition and success are limited only by your imagination.
“Push boundaries, don’t compromise, don’t accept no for an answer. Everything is possible.”
Just an ordinary school day for hundreds of children at the new school (Credit: Portakabin / Mace)
A normal day
Blackwell and some of his co-workers speak at schools about engineering. The company runs an apprenticeship programme and is experimenting with 3D printing, which Blackwell considers to be the “holy grail” of modular construction. While moving from prototypes to actual construction is still a “quantum leap”, Blackwell believes that being able to print modules on site would be a game changer.
On 18 September, hundreds of children arrived for their first day at KAA2. The orchestra had fallen silent, the 12-hour days were finished and the final push to hand over the school had been completed. Inside, the children found 33 teaching rooms, art rooms, IT centres, libraries, music and dance rooms and the eight laboratories that were moved around as Shuttleworth hurtled along on that train to Leeds. There was even a Special Educational Needs centre.
“We have all the facilities we need to deliver the same rich curriculum to our students for the academic year and ensure their education is not impacted by the temporary move,” says the school’s principal David Benson. “This has enabled us to ensure our school community stays strong.”
Shuttleworth was there on that first day and what struck him most was how normal it all felt.
“It was just another normal school day. It was very special and everybody felt a real sense of accomplishment,” he says.
The Kensington Aldridge Academy is moving forward, performing well academically, and plans to return to its permanent home next year. Grenfell Tower will be covered up and probably demolished. Shuttleworth will be called to manage new projects.
“Do I have more grey hairs?” He wonders. “Maybe a few. But we knew if we kept hitting the milestones, we would get there.”
One of over 30 teaching areas built at the new KAA2 school (Credit: Portakabin / Mace)
Construction timeline:
* 21 June: Department for Education starts to appoint contractors to build KAA2
* 23 June: Two potential sites located
* 27 June: Portakabin engaged
* 28 June: Site surveys are commissioned
* 30 June: Consent to use parade ground received
* 3 July: Portakabin starts design workshops with KAA
* 10 July: General arrangement plans signed off for units manufacture
* 12 July: Portakabin starts with initial site set-up
* 17 July: Groundworks commence
* 28 July: First units delivered to site
* 8 August: Planning application submitted
* 11 September: Block A handed over
* 15 September: Building control sign-off achieved, with occupation certificate issued
* 18 September: School takes occupation
Emotional but rewarding: KAA2 serves almost a thousand children (Credit: Portakabin / Mace)
Project by numbers:
Number of students accommodated: 960
Weeks from appointment of contractors to occupation: 12
Weeks from site set-up to occupation: 9
Total number of site inductions: 402
Total number of visitor inductions: 63
Estimated man-hours: 42,600
Minimum number of workers on site: 12
Maximum number of workers on site: 150
Average modules installed each day: 7
Most modules delivered in one day: 12
Total length of partitions within building: 1,578m
Approximate length of electrical sub-mains distribution cabling installed: 2,150m
Number of pedestrian and vehicles gates: 11
Fencing erected: 600m
Modules used: 210
Module sizes: 12m X 3.3m; 10m X 3.3m; 12.1m X 3.9m
Blocks built: 6
Teaching rooms built: 33
Science labs built: 8
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* Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.