Celebrating a year of ambition and achievement
(Times Higher Education Awards 2024: Winners Citation)
When it comes to campus redevelopments, the temptation is often to call in the bulldozers and start again from scratch – but the University of Plymouth demonstrated that first-rate facilities can be developed on a much smaller carbon footprint.
This approach was showcased in the £100 million transformation of the 1960s InterCity Place and the 1970s Babbage Building into cutting-edge teaching and research facilities. The schemes, conducted in collaboration with specialist contractors – many of them from the local south-west region – saved almost 5,000 tonnes of carbon compared with new builds.
InterCity Place forms the first part of a wider plan to regenerate the Plymouth railway station complex, supporting the university’s civic agenda, and during the project students had the opportunity to learn from construction professionals, while research expertise in thermal imaging was applied to identify energy-saving improvements. Another development, the CobBauge building, was a first-of-its-kind showcase of sustainable construction technologies.
Sustainability and student participation were prioritised in Plymouth’s wider estates activities – for example, a landscaping management plan engaging students through gardening opportunities and a photographic community, a scheme to encourage reuse of furniture and equipment, and increased use of ethically and locally procured food on campus.
Along the way, the 313-strong estates and facilities team supported the filming of a primetime BBC drama and worked with colleagues to source and transport an electricity generator to a partner university in Ukraine.
Mr Trevor Wills
