06/05/10 - Thomas Vale wins Built in Quality Award

John Hickman, Project Manager at Thomas Vale Construction collected the award on the night, he said: “We are extremely proud of this award and want to thank everyone involved in the project. The teachers and children of St Luke’s now have an incredible environment to learn in which will act positively on Wolverhampton’s future.”

St Luke’s Primary School is one of Britain’s first BREEAM excellent primary schools, located within an area of regeneration and including flexible community facilities. The timber frame structure includes a number of sustainable features such as Biomass heating and a building management system for cross ventilation. Sustainable materials were used including untreated UK grown douglas fir timber wall cladding and a cedar shingle roof.

The judges commented that the project has a bright airy feel, and achieves a fit-for-purpose solution whilst providing a safe, successful and happy environment for children to develop.

The Built in Quality awards, launched by Birmingham City Council’s Building and Consultancy Services twelve years ago, are presented to builders who achieve outstanding quality in their construction work, particularly in relation to the building control process. These are the only regional awards of their kind to cover all forms of construction. The success and growing regional importance of the Built in Quality Awards is demonstrated by the increasing involvement from West Midlands Local Authorities. Throughout the year, building control surveyors look out for work of a particularly high standard to nominate these projects for the awards. Each scheme is scored against a range of criteria. The judges then visit those projects achieving the highest scores to select the winners.