Client: SEEDA Location: St Mary’s Island, Chatham, Kent Value: £1.58 million Form of Contract: JCT Design & Build Actual Contract Duration: 35wks Year of Completion: 2004 St Mary’s Island Health & Community Centre at Chatham was designed and built as a “sustainable” building for one of our valued Client SEEDA. Solar energy collectors were installed to act as a pre-heater for hot water storage and photo voltaic cells were installed to generate electricity during the day to the equivalent of 10% of the annual electrical usage. Any excess energy generated, when there is no load on the building’s energy supply, is fed back to the National Grid. Levels of insulation are also increased to reduce levels of outgoing energy on our projects. The Roof insulation was increased using extruded polystyrene to form a ‘warm roof’ achieving a U value of 0-12w/m² ºC. The use of additional thick extruded polystyrene insulation in conjunction with cavity walls, built from insulating blockwork, along with the use of ‘outsulation’ and thin-coat render systems allowed us to achieve U values of 0-23w/m² ºC for the walls. A U value of 0-15w/m² ºC for the floors was attained using Insulating polystyrene blocks in a suspended T-Beam flooring system with structural concrete topping, additional insulation and floating recycled timber flooring over the top. The development included the use of timber from sustainable sources including Glulam beams as both a structurally and aesthetically pleasing element. Materials used included Cedar and green oak Cladding from fully sustainable sources in lieu of steel cladding or brick and block facings and ‘green’ material alternatives such as rubber flooring in lieu of Vinyls, aluminium/timber composite windows and steel gutter systems replacing plastics. St Mary’s Island Health & Community Centres came in the top 4 at the Kent Design Awards, 2005 in the ‘Public Buildings’ category.