We are excited to announce that Local Growth Funding has been awarded for the Net-Zero Accelerator Hubs for 4 Colleges across Lothian, the Borders and Fife. Working in collaboration with Luths Services, Hardies Property and Construction Consultants, Mass Timber Structures
and Elliott and Company Consulting Engineers, we delivered a feasibility study and site-by-site option appraisals for modularised and sustainable training facilities that are required for the Colleges as the diversity of courses they offer are expanding with the growth of sustainable technologies.
The funding was announced at West Lothian College by The Secretory for State, Douglas Alexander on the Thursday 3rd September.
These Hubs help answer a panoply of construction industry needs, for when architects discuss the challenges facing the built environment, the same issues are to the fore: the climate crisis, the importance of retrofit and the need for maximum carbon-lock in newbuild; the need to do that newbuild in healthy, circular economy ways; and skills shortages and the need to capitalise on young people’s wish for well paid and useful jobs.
It’s so heartening to be involved in a project where all these challenges are addressed, together. Four training Hubs attached to South East Scotland’s further education colleges, where young people can learn the skills the built environment needs; but also where the existing construction workforce can retrain to face these new challenges. And the brief for us was that these Hubs should not just be tin sheds where training is downloaded, but living examples of the sorts of new vernacular technologies we need to embrace: mass timber - ideally Scottish-grown - locking carbon and detailed to avoid the toxic treatments that 99% of the building industry use, incorporation of hemp in insulation, the maximising of useful north-light, renewable arrays and interactive teaching of simple Building Management Systems.
Thanks go to Simon Earp (West Lothian College Vice Principal, People, Performance and Improvement) and Professor Sean Smith (School of Engineering and Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh) for their efforts in securing the funding. Further information on the Net-Zero Accelerator Hubs can be found on the project page.
