St Patrick's Academy, Dungannon

Doran Consulting was commissioned to provide Civil, Structural and Traffic Engineering design for the new school on a brown field site in Dungannon, accommodating 1,300 pupils.

The new facility was constructed on the sports pitches of the original school.  This area had previously been filled so a piled foundation solution was adopted.  Significant earthworks were required, including a contiguous piled retaining wall, 100m in length, to retain the access roadway to the adjacent College building which is at a higher level.  A new access roadway was created on an embankment, leading through the existing school site and past the College to the new school. 

The new building has 75 teaching classrooms with associated support spaces, administration facilities, a library, careers suit, sixth form facilities a sports hall, an oratory, kitchen and dining facilities, car parking and bus drop off points and playgrounds.  The school was framed in structural steel, with precast concrete floors and masonry cladding. 

Following completion of the new building, the existing school building was demolished to make way for new sports pitches.  These were designed to accommodate a wide variety of sports.  A new pavilion was constructed adjacent to the pitches, which was designed for both school and community use and includes four changing rooms, a meeting room, car parking and maintenance store. 

The drainage design included a large diameter storm sewer to provide storage and attenuation before discharging in to an adjacent watercourse.  The foul flow from the school had to be pumped in to the public sewer.