The new build Canaan Lane Primary School provides much needed accommodation for primary school and early years nursery spaces in the Morningside catchment area of Edinburgh. The new school opened in August 2022 has capacity for 420 primary school pupils and has an early learning and childcare facility with capacity for 80 early years spaces.

The new 2-storey building includes:

8 dedicated classrooms, 1 general purpose classroom, flexible teaching/break-out spaces, dining hall and kitchen, PE hall, 2 nursery classrooms, library, staff facilities, comms room, laundry room and external playgrounds.

The new school was designed with sustainability at its core, and it achieved a BREEAM rating of “Very Good”.

Primary heating for the building is provided by 6 no. Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs), with a natural gas fired boiler providing additional top-up heat for domestic hot water generation. Heating throughout the school is provided by underfloor heating served from the main heating plant. A dedicated variable-temperature heating circuit within the heating plant room distributes low temperature hot water throughout the building to each underfloor heating manifold.

FES Ltd was engaged by Morgan Sindall to deliver the following:

• Supply, install, test and commission the mechanical and electrical services and IT infrastructure
• The infrastructure package incorporated the coordination, installation, testing and commissioning of water and gas services into the building
• FES had Contractor’s Design Portions (CDPs) for bracketry, pipework, air-conditioning, natural ventilation, fire, security and sprinklers, underfloor heating, lighting controls, induction loops, clocks, earthing, lightning protection, the Building Management System (BMS) and data.

Prefabrication

FES made good use of prefabrication for M&E services, utilising modules and the construction of 2 no. plant rooms. This ensured that bulky construction works were done in a safe, secure environment and were delivered to site ready for install. The modules reduced M&E programme installation durations in the corridors from several weeks to a few days.

Client Feedback:

“FES are to be commended on their M&E services delivery on this project. Their work rate was impressive, especially throughout the commissioning phase. The installations were of a very high quality throughout with few defects and any reported were dealt with promptly and to our satisfaction.”

Pete Almand, Senior Project Manager, City of Edinburgh Council

“The team at FES were a pleasure to work with. They pulled out all the stops to ensure that the client handover went ahead on the handover date and provided a high-quality delivery. I look forward to working with their team on future projects.”

Michael Braiden, Morgan Sindall, Senior Operations Manager