Elta Top of the Class in Scottish School Project

The education sector continues to prove an important market for Elta Building Services Division in the West Midlands, after an assortment of fans were supplied as part of a £4.5 million secondary school refurbishment project in Fife, Scotland.

The school, St. Andrews High School, is a Roman Catholic, mixed, comprehensive school in Overton Road, Kirkcaldy, serving the eastern side of Fife.

Fifteen fans were supplied to mechanical and electrical subcontractors Livingston Mechanical Services Limited, through Elta distributor Lindab Glasgow. The order comprised five Quietflow Single, four Compact Plate fans, three SJ Jetflow, two STBD Twinflow and one Quietflow Twin along with all necessary speed controllers and invertors for use in the school’s new heating, ventilating (both smoke and natural ventilation) and air conditioning systems.

The project is the current phase of the local council’s alteration and extension programme – started as far back as 1999 – to upgrade the school and remove all the hutted accommodation from the school estate. It consists of alterations to the existing buildings, the forming of a link connection and the construction of a new, three-storey teaching block extension for Art & Design, Music, Computing, Business Education, Religious Education and Home Economics. It also includes new ancillary accommodation to address schooling needs, with energy efficiency and sustainability very much at the heart of the construction programme.

Stuart Johnstone, Key Account Manager for Elta in Scotland and responsible for the St Andrews project, comments ” “The education sector has become increasingly important to us as a business. It is a sector in which an environmentally aware approach to building is very much to the fore and this fits very well with our own philosophy of seeking to maximise the energy efficiency of our fans to contribute to that whole process of reducing the carbon footprint of school buildings. Maintaining a good balance of heating and ventilation is seen as particularly important in schools since stale, stuffy air and increased CO2 levels (as well as noise from equipment where attention has not been given to noise reduction) can have a significant impact on concentration levels, directly impacting on the ability to learn.”

Main contractor on the project is HBS Construction Glasgow, which has a strong reputation in the building sector ranging from the provision of primary and secondary level classrooms blocks, to extensive teaching and research facilities. Consulting Engineers are Grontmij, one of Europe’s largest multidisciplinary firms with clients in the private and public sectors.

A new games hall was opened in 2000 as the first stage of the programme, and a new building for Social Subjects and Guidance opened in 2004. The most recently completed extension at the rear of the school was opened in December 2008. In July 2009, work commenced on the refurbishment of two Craft and Design classrooms. In partnership with a local company, the school will also be refurbishing a classroom as a ‘Classroom for the Future’, a multi-purpose teaching area. Other projects currently ongoing within the education capital programme, include rainwater harvesting, increased building insulation/air tightness, natural ventilation strategies with window actuators – and a sedum roof.

For further information please contact Elta on 01384 275 800.

Elta is part of the £85 million Elta Group, a family of businesses with operations in six countries on four continents which, together with a network of international distributors, provides quality fans and related air movement equipment to customers worldwide.