Calder Vale Academy

A live school of 1,140 pupils, a fixed academic calendar, and a site where the only vehicle route to the works passed the main pedestrian entrance. The programme was built backwards from two six-week summer windows, with everything noisy, dusty or heavy confined to them.

Term-time work was limited to the hoarded compound and to activities we could demonstrate were below 55 dB at the nearest classroom window. We monitored continuously and published the readings weekly to the trust, which we would do again — it converted a standing argument into a shared spreadsheet.

The sports hall frame went up in the first summer, the envelope and fit out across the year, and the teaching block in the second. Safeguarding: every operative DBS checked, one gated entry point, and a banksman on the pedestrian crossing at every start and finish of the school day.