Kitchen Project update

It’s been some time since my last Kitchen Project update, not surprisingly the College focus has been in other areas. Our contactor Hutton Construction has made every effort to continue with the project and managed to keep the site open, initially however productivity was greatly reduced. Hutton quite rightly prioritised the safety of their workforce, by following Government and Public Health England advice. All on-site activity continues to be risk assessed and safe systems of work are in place and continue to be monitored. Happily, so far we have had no confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the kitchen project or any of our other College projects. Work has also now resumed at 5 Park Parade, where we are converting a terraced house into additional student accommodation.

Over the last month progress has gathered pace, with more trades able to operate safely on-site and an increased availability of raw materials. Whilst we are probably not yet operating at full capacity we are reaching close to it. Although this is good news, we are clearly not going to be able to make up all of the lost time before the start of the next academic year. Our first estimates suggest that the effect of COVID-19 would account for a delay of approximately 12 weeks, as long as we don’t see any further shifts in the way the project can operate. This would put the completion date to January 2021 which would not be ideal as it would involve another restart following the Christmas break. In order to avoid this Hutton are reviewing their schedules with the aim of pulling the completion date back into this year and we hope that they can achieve this.

The good news is that the new basement kitchen has made excellent progress and will be completed in August. This will mean that the kitchen operations going into Michaelmas term will be greatly improved and much more resilient. Although we are not in a position to know exactly how the Catering Department will operate next year, we will be in a good position to deliver whatever is asked of it.