Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (BBES) has completed a mechanical and electrical services contract for Strathclyde Fire and Rescue's new £36m training facility.
Designed by architects Cooper Cromar and built by main contractor Lend Lease, the 30 acre site in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, will offer specialised training for every modern emergency, including rail and road crashes, building explosions and blazes in high rise buildings. At the centre is a 5,000m2 academic building, comprising an incident command training suite, lecture rooms, library, canteen and meeting facilities.

BBES carried out a full mechanical and electrical fit out including water, power and gas to the main academic building, as well as the numerous training buildings throughout the site. The training building, designed to provide the ability to recreate real life scenarios, also required data and CCTV services.

To minimise the facility's environmental impact the building services design also included the installation of a biomass boiler, a wind turbine and a rainwater harvesting system. The rainwater harvesting system will use water collected from the main building's flat roof for flushing the toilets.

In addition, elements of the mechanical and electrical package, including wiring, plumbing and the biomass plant room, were fabricated offsite at BBES' Modular Systems + facility in Wednesbury, to further minimise the environmental impact and as part of BBES' drive to create sustainable build solutions. The components were then delivered to site for installation.

During the project BBES collaborated with consulting engineers Hulley and Kirkwood on a series of workshops to ensure sectional programme delivery dates were achieved. The workshops established which components would be prefabricated offsite. This solution was based around improving installation times to ensure the client's milestones were met.

Three apprentices from the BBES craft apprenticeship scheme were among 15 apprentices involved in the build.