South Wales Police - Police Learning Centre

South Wales Police has one of the largest estates within the blue-light sector.

Following a strategic review of its estate, and with an influx of recruits and new officers in mind, South Wales Police have combined their office and training facility to create the Police Learning Centre, replacing existing facilities spread across the force area.

This purpose-built facility houses all the teaching requirements within one building, on one site. The four storey building is a permanent base for learning and development services and human resources. It also accommodates an office facility for the police and crime commissioner.

Inside the training facility are two large training suites for beep tests; tazer training and self-defence classes, plus changing rooms and four classrooms.

In total within the footprint of the building are:

• new catering and dining areas
• multi-use meeting rooms
• a 114 space lecture theatre
• an open atrium for flexible learning and relaxation
• open plan offices for the police crime commissioner
• open plan offices for human resources and development teams
• specialist immersive training suites
• training break out spaces
• 25 classrooms and gender neutral locker, shower rooms

How it was built

Construction consisted of concrete deep strip foundations; concrete floor slab; concrete frame; steel frame to lecture area, roof top plant rooms; atrium bridges and atrium roof and curtain walling.

Alongside this, we did enabling works for a large 314 space car park including new access roads; the demolition of existing buildings; service identification/diversions; new retaining walls and section 111 highway works and the refurbishment and construction of a new stores building all valued at circa £10m.

Construction Manager gold

Our project lead won a gold medal at the 2022 Construction Manager of the Year awards, here's what the judges said:

On a difficult brownfield site, Chris Purchase scored the big victories in the ground.

Pockets of contaminated land meant either removing 19,000 tonnes of subsoil or covering the pockets with a geomembrane and capping them. That was until Chris suggested a cheaper and easier alternative: sustainable reuse. By densely planting more than 20,000 low-maintenance native trees, shrubs and bushes, he was able to have the land certified as a site of importance for nature conservation, allowing the soil to be remediated and retained.

Similarly, he eliminated a piling operation to deal with voids under one of the new buildings. Instead, he excavated the fractured rock, crushed it and then returned it as fill, along with crushed rubble from the initial demolition works. It saved the client £750,000 and advanced site start by two months.

Exploiting his extensive experience of heavy civil engineering works, Chris developed a cut solution to create construction plateaus in ground that was extremely dry in summer but awash with springs during the winter rains. His drainage solution of trenches with perforated pipes at the base down the escarpments and gabions planted with sedums along them saved time and money.