Working for WYG, Box Twenty were appointed to undertake the MEP design for the extension of Courtlands Vehicle Maintenance Depot for Surrey Police and Fire.

The extension doubled the floor area of the facility and provided a purpose building maintenance workshop for MOT testing and work on fire tenders as well as smaller police and fire vehicles.

The facility included a parts store, goods lift, ancillary office spaces as well as staff welfare facilities. The site was constrained in size due to the overall plot dimensions and therefore careful consideration of the appropriate relocation of existing generator and vehicle washdown facility was required.

The site also required upgrades to the existing utilities supplies, including the provision of a new substation as the existing facility was served from a small pole-mounted transformer.

Box Twenty completed applications and negotiated with the local utilities suppliers to arrange the necessary alterations.

Box Twenty produced a design pack which will shortly go out for tender on a Design and Build contract. The building included VRF heating and cooling to the office spaces, gas fired unit heaters to heat the high bay maintenance areas, gas-fired domestic hot water as well as electric panel heaters in the back of house areas.

Multi-service reels, including compressed air and oil were installed on a grid system across the open plan maintenance area to allow for services to be available across the space. Ventilation was provided using mechanical ventilation with heat recovery units with local extract systems for the battery storage bay, welding areas and extendable ventilation reels to connect to the vehicle exhausts.

The electric systems included high efficiency LED lighting, relocation of the standby generator, and alterations to the LV infrastructure. CCTV and security systems on this project were designed by Surrey Police’s security team.