Nottinghamshire County Council identified Westdale Infant School as one of more than 20 schools across the county that required urgent repairs, upgrades and improvements as part of the School Building Improvement Programme. With the school building in need of significant upgrades to its core infrastructure, the council approached Arc Partnership to design, manage and deliver the works on its behalf.

The school roof was last recovered in the late 1990s and was now suffering from various points of rainwater ingress which in turn was damaging internal surfaces.

The roof now provided a deck for banks of PV panels providing energy for the school, however the imposed weight had a detrimental effect on the roof structure causing further damage to it's integrity.

Surveys carried out by Arc Partnership proved the existing roof timbers to be structurally defective and large areas of the existing structure needed to be completely removed and replaced, or strengthened with steel plates. In addition to this, the school required new and upgraded lighting, replacement suspended ceilings, improved fire safety systems and appropriate asbestos removal.

For the re-roofing to proceed safely in a live school environment, the project had to be conducted in six overlapping phases. Firstly, the most critical aspects such as asbestos removal, scaffolding, were completed over school closures and outside of school hours to minimise any risk to the school, its pupils and teachers. Additionally, several classrooms were affected, meaning that temporary modular accommodation needed to be installed onsite for pupils to be decanted into as the works progressed across the entire school.

The required works in a live school environment were challenging and required careful negotiation and planning with Nottinghamshire County Council and the School's leadership team to reduce impact on the school day, whilst delivering to the highest standards of health and safety and current building regulations.

The project was successfully handed over in November 2023, 4 weeks ahead of programme.

Each phase has successfully been delivered on time and handed over to the school, and at present, the expenditure is under budget with the saving returned to Nottinghamshire County Council.