The University of Kent Sibson building creates a vibrant new campus destination, bringing together academics, students, researchers and administrative staff from the Kent Business School and School of Mathematics, Statistics & Actuarial Science.

The building provides to a number of key facilities including 3 state of the art lecture theatres, exemplar teaching rooms, school administrative and academic staff offices for both schools, commercial kitchen, meeting and social learning spaces.

Our involvement - alongside Penoye and Prasad architects - began at competition stage. On wining the architectural competition we were appointed for RIBA Stages 2-4 to develop the building services, sustainability and environmental strategies, and acoustic designs for a design and build procurement. Subsequently, we were appointed directly by the University of Kent in a client monitoring role to oversee the contractor’s design and construction, and for 12 month post occupancy reviews.

Working with the University’s FM and Estate department and worked with the campus’ incumbent controls contractor, we developed the building management controls package to ensure controls were maintainable, intuitive and easy to use for each user group.

The project achieved a Construction Stage BREEAM rating of "Excellent" in March 2017. Max Fordham carried out seasonal commissioning during the first year of occupancy to evaluate and fine tune the building systems to inform and help the university achieve its low carbon and energy goals.