Falconers Hill Academy, Daventry

Following a competitive tender, we were appointed by The David Ross Education Trust to replace the heating plant at Falconers Hill Academy in Daventry — the latest in a series of significant projects we’ve delivered for the Trust across its schools.  Winning this work on tender, against the market, in a relationship that already spans several years and multiple academies, says something we’d rather let the record say for us: the Trust keeps coming back, and still expects us to be competitive when we do.

The existing boiler plant at Falconers Hill had reached the end of its serviceable life. Replacing it in a live primary school meant more than swapping the boilers: the strip out, the flue, the controls and the condition of the existing distribution system all had to be dealt with as one package, and the whole thing handed over working, certified and understood by the site team. The project is now complete.

Scope of Works

1. Strip out and enabling works – Full strip out of the redundant boiler plant, including licensed asbestos removal within the plantroom, carried out under controlled conditions before installation works began.

2. Heating plant replacement – Supplied and installed two Ideal Evomax 150kW boilers, giving the academy 300kW of total output, complete with the manufacturer’s frame and header kit and a low loss header. Running two boilers in cascade rather than a single large unit gives the school resilience — a fault on one boiler no longer means a cold school — and lets the plant modulate down to match demand on milder days instead of short-cycling. All associated pipework, valves and plantroom connections were installed as part of the package.

3. Flue replacement – Complete replacement of the flue system serving the new plant, designed and installed as an open flue arrangement to suit the plantroom.

4. Controls modifications – Modified and reconfigured the existing heating controls to suit the new plant, so the school retained familiar operation of its heating.

6. System power flush – Full power flush of the heating system. On a system of this age, clearing years of accumulated debris protects the new plant from day one and restores circulation to under-performing areas of the building.
7. Testing, commissioning and handover – Full testing and commissioning of the completed installation, followed by O&M manuals, as-fitted drawings and an on-site demonstration to the school’s site team.

A Trusted Partner to The David Ross Education Trust

Falconers Hill is the latest chapter in a working relationship with the Trust that goes back several years and spans schools across Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.  In that time we’ve delivered major capital heating schemes as well as the day-to-day work that keeps school buildings running — full heating system replacements, boiler plant renewals, gas infrastructure works, legionella remedial works and reactive plumbing across the Trust’s estate. That mix matters: we’re not a contractor the Trust calls in once for a capital project and never sees again. We’re on their sites through the year, which means we understand how their schools operate, who to speak to, and what “minimum disruption” actually looks like in a working academy.

Working in a Live School

Work in an education setting brings constraints that don’t apply elsewhere: safeguarding, restricted access, and an immovable deadline in the shape of the school calendar. The works were programmed around those constraints rather than the other way round.

Asbestos removal in an occupied school building in particular has to be planned, licensed and completed in sequence before anything else starts. Building it into the tendered package from the outset — rather than discovering it mid-programme — kept the works predictable for the Trust and the school.

Handover

The completed system was fully tested and commissioned, and handed over with O&M manuals, as-fitted drawings and a formal demonstration to the site team — so the people responsible for the building day to day understood how the new plant worked before we left site.

The academy now has heating plant with years of reliable service ahead of it, a cleaned and properly circulating distribution system, and a site team who know how to run it.