Carroll Court set to be the largest Passivhaus project in the world

Demolition has taken place at Carroll Court in Bristol to make way for the new 900 bed student accommodation scheme for the University of West of England, which is set to become the first phase of the largest student accommodation Passivhaus project in the world.

The enabling works aspects of the project have been undertaken by Pennys Group. Our team have been instrumental in taking the project to this stage, alongside Stride Treglown, by providing services including ground investigations, drainage design, cut and fill modelling, demolition risk, ground void risk and piling assessment, pile load testing, piling mat design and inspections. In doing so, we have worked through complicated ground conditions in a methodical manner; highlighting risk and potential outcomes to ensure the best solution could be achieved with appropriate testing to keep the project on programme and risk managed. The site is now prepared ready for Vinci to commence with the main construction works for Phase 1.

Once completed, Carroll Court will provide 900 student rooms on the Frenchay main campus. With sustainability at its core and the key drive for obtaining Passivhaus standards, we’ve supported the team in developing engineering options which meet the insulation and finishing requirements of this level of award.

To achieve this, we have led the civil and structural engineering design including a frame selection process that assesses the various design criteria of airtightness, thermal bridging, acoustic performance and speed of construction against cost and risk, in order to determine the optimum frame choice. As part of our frame assessment we also undertook an embodied carbon assessment of each frame option to help advise the client on what the associated embodied carbon in construction per m2 of development would be for each option, using our embodied Carbon Digital Toolkit.