Civil Engineering Building Officially Open

The Civil Engineering Building on the West Cambridge Campus was officially opened on the 24th September 2019 by Andrew Wyllie, CBE, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

The new building is for the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure & Cities (UKCRIC), the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing (NRFIS) and the Civil Engineering Department and was funded through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Procured on a two-stage basis, the building comprises a basement, a steel frame which is bolted rather than welded, precast concrete hollow-core flooring, a façade of rainscreen cladding and curtain walling with integrated external fins and a ‘blue/green roof’ with solar panels.

The purpose of the facility is for the application and development of advanced sensor technologies, particularly to monitor the UK’s infrastructure in order to improve resilience and extract maximum whole life value. As such, the building accommodates a mixture of research, testing, training and collaborative spaces with vibration isolated, and microelectromechanical system, laboratories.

Finally, Civil Engineering building incorporates several pioneering and innovative aspects, such as using an energy/cost metric to minimise energy usage, the installation of building sensors to report on humidity and carbon dioxide levels and elements of innovative concrete. The building is on course to achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’.