Prime Minister opens Lab

Prime Minister Gordon Brown opened the University of Warwick's flagship building - the Digital Lab - using 'virtual scissors' to cut a ribbon in cyberspace.

We recently completed the Digital Laboratory contract for Norwest Holst at Warwick University. Warwick Digital Laboratory is a state of the art building that will be used for collaborative research, knowledge transfer and education and training by The Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG).

Since the 1980s WMG has been at the fore-front of researching and applying in businesses and other organisations, lean manufacturing, procurement, logistic and management processes which make more efficient use of commodities and other resources with less waste: delivering both economic and environmental benefits. One of the programmes that will be developed at the Digital Laboratory will be to create products in virtual environments. This reduces the time and expense that is associated with making prototypes of new products in the traditional way before putting them into mass production.

Our site manager was Andy Marshall assisted by Simon Wootton. The scope of our £2 million contract for Norwest Holst included all electrical, mechanical and public health services. Hoare Lea were the building services design consultants. The internal architecture relies on the structural elements of the Digital Laboratory and most of the building services we installed are exposed to compliment the laboratory theme. The electrical & mechanical services installation to the laboratory incorporates a number of energy saving measures including actuators on all the opening windows linked to the TAC Building Energy Management System and automated lighting controls. Accurate setting out and a high quality finish was essential for the success of our contract. Heating and cooling to the building is by pre-insulated underground pipe work connected to the University district mains services.

Well done to Andy and his team as they have produced an installation that has been complimented by Norwest Holst, Hoare Lea and Warwick University.

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