Animal Care and Welfare Building
Reimagining spaces to provide a sustainable centre for animal care at Dudley College
The Animal Science Department is part of Dudley College’s School Leaver curriculum, which prepares students for employment in their chosen area of study. It offers practical, hands-on training, giving students the skills to care for the wellbeing of pets, working animals, livestock and wildlife.
The Animal Care and Welfare Building will provide dedicated purpose-built spaces to house the Animal Science department, which has had multiple homes across the campus.
Following an appraisal of the College’s Broadway Campus, an existing 1950s building was seen as highly appropriate for re-use, offering significant potential to create a high quality, robust, sustainable retrofit project whilst providing the spaces required by the brief.
Built in line with Passivhaus standards, the new facility will provide four ‘Animal Care’ rooms for the storage and practical teaching of different animal groupings including, small mammals, exotic mammals, aquatics and turtles, and reptiles and tortoises
In addition to the specialist animal spaces, the building will provide several typical classrooms, IT rooms, and a general science teaching room. A publicly accessible dog-grooming suite is also to be provided, designed to reflect a commercial environment.
This project is being undertaken using the innovative Integrated Project Insurance (IPI) contract, in which all consultants and on-site teams form an ‘Alliance’, or virtual company, at the outset of the project. The intention is to remove adversarial working and create a collaborative, open working environment where all are mutually responsible for delivering a high-quality project on time and within budget. A board is elected to represent the Alliance and make key decisions on behalf of the whole team.