Location:
Paisley Grammar School
Client:
Sector:
Woolgar Hunter provided civil, structural, and geo-environmental engineering services on this development, which will be completed in summer 2026.
The project comprises a new 3 storey school complex accommodating up to 1350 pupils on the site of the former Chivas bottling plant in Paisley. The building is split into 2 wings with a central entrance hall linking the two. The remainder of the site contains access roads, surface car parking, sports pitches and general soft landscaping including a SuDS basin.
Engineering Excellence
The school’s state of the art facilities will include workshops, kitchens, all weather pitches and a 300 seat theatre in addition to standard classrooms and administrative space. These elements have influenced the structural design, requiring long, column-free spans at roof level over large communal spaces. The central entrance hall leads to a triple height space and acts to link the two wings together, whilst also housing the dining facilities for the school. A series of double and triple height voids are also present above learning plazas throughout both wings of the building.
A lot of the steelwork used to construct the main frame was sourced from Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steel, which has lower embodied carbon factors in comparison to blast furnace produced steel. This helped minimise the overall embodied carbon impact of the project.
