Modular Kitchen at St Lawrence Primary School

St Lawrence Church of England Primary School aims to serve its community by providing an education of the highest quality for a number of parishes surrounding the village of Napton-on-the-Hill near Southam in Warwickshire.

In recent years, the school’s lunchtime meal offering was produced offsite and delivered each day via thermal transport boxes, before being dished up and served to the pupils in the school hall.

Recognising that the quality of the meals would be significantly improved if they were produced on-site, the school instructed their appointed property management consultants to source options for a new build kitchen facility, to be positioned on a 55sqm piece of land within the school grounds which was being used to house a bike store and storage shed.

To assist with this process, PKL was tasked with producing a schematic design and associated price for the provision of a building regulation-compliant, permanent specification modular kitchen facility, capable of producing approximately 120 meals per day. As part of the initial feasibility process, a number of options were then compared, with the PKL option going on to prove the most appropriate, both from a financial and quality perspective.

As such, PKL was formally appointed to the design team in July 2021, and after just 2 design revisions, received design approval which allowed the client to proceed with planning and building control applications.

Planning was approved at the end of April 2022, at which point the costs of construction were still spiralling due to the ongoing impact of Covid, Brexit and more recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As such, a short period of Value Engineering was undertaken by all parties, which saw the specification for the exterior of the kitchen switched from a brick surround to timber cladding.

With budgets aligned, PKL accepted instruction in June 2022 and commenced the offsite construction of a 7m x 6m kitchen facility. A programme delay required PKL to store the facility for approximately 6 weeks whilst the enabling works were finalised, before PKL delivered the Modular facility to site the week before Christmas. The installation and commissioning works were then concluded during the third week in January, ready for the school to produce their first on-site prepared school meal on January 23rd.

Mr Brine, Headteacher at Lawrence commented: “Food is fresher and healthier, menus and specific requirements can be catered for and have been designed to appeal to those who enjoy them. Numbers have grown as a result. The catering team do like their new kitchen.”

Location: St Lawrence Primary School
Requirement: Offsite constructed modular kitchen facility.
Supplied: 7m x6m modular kitchen facility, permanent specification