Work starts on £16m college training facility

The building will be located on land bought last year from Yorkshire Design Group at Hunslet Lane and Black Bull Street in the centre of Leeds.

The college has appointed GB Building Solutions as the lead contractor and AECOM as project managers. The new 86,000 sq ft building will take about 51 weeks to build.

Ian Billyard, principal at Leeds College of Building, said: “This much anticipated project will not only encourage further regeneration of the area, but will create an inspiring new campus that will serve a large proportion of our 7,500 students.

“It’s an extremely exciting time for the college and we envisage that the project will be hugely beneficial to our students and staff as well as the wider construction industry as we will be able to support growth from this new campus.”

Mike Harris, director at architect Fuse Studios, said: “The new building will deliver an unrivalled learning environment for the students, with over half of the space dedicated to the new specialist workshops. Separate classroom areas and non-teaching spaces which include a new entrance piazza, library, student services area and refectory all combine to create a truly innovative and inspiring learning environment.”

Anthony Judge, from GB Group, said: “We have already started the enabling works with vibro and pad foundations scheduled for February and March, after that, we will start work on the erection of the steel frame. The whole project will be completed for the start of January 2015.”

Mr Billyard added: “The project marks the start of the consolidation of our six sites into this energy efficient and attractive new campus which will sit alongside our existing North Street and Millwright Street campuses.

“The new site is extremely easy to access on foot.”