The Hart Leisure Centre is a flagship building which has an iconic curved form, enabling the design to sit comfortably within a green field park setting. The project also demonstrates best practice and has already been highlighted as an exemplar scheme and a Sport England case study based on the layout and latest technologies promoted within the centre. Features include a modern reception and coffee shop, an 8 metre high climbing wall, 3 dance studios, an 8-court sports hall, a crèche and a fitness gym. The scheme also includes 5 external ATP pitches and 4 full size grass pitches with associated external changing room facilities – all designed and constructed to Sport England and FA regulations. Seamless design between external landscape and building, including the outdoor pitches and links to the leisure centre. The site has a sustainable planting scheme with bio-diversity areas of planting which supports the existing ecology on the site. The parking is well designed, located close to the main entrance, however not a dominant feature of the main entrance. Scope of Works: • The design has a good quality external appearance design which seeks to make best use of views whilst minimising the impact on the surrounding parkland. • Clever use of materials which responds to the parkland setting, working closely with the planning team. The external material palette has considered buildability within the technical design, which has helped meet programme targets and removed most of the wet trades on site. • GT3 Architects led the stakeholder community consultation and project stakeholder discussions, through workshops, the web, and live models which encouraged the community and key stakeholders to get involved with the design process. • BREEAM Excellent building. Sports Hall Flexibility It was critical to understand the planned uses for the sports hall and the activities to be carried out within. Runoff distances, sub-divisibility, spectator viewing, concurrent operations, technical equipment and National Governing Body requirements can all impact on the design, specification and hence costs of this space. Operational Flow Modelling Operational Flow Modelling resulted in 400sqm of building area savings and £840k in project costs. This model also informed key materials around the centre, highlighting which ones needed to be more durable. We used this latest crowd-modelling technique to illustrate predicted user movements and identify potential queuing and congestion locations. This informed the size and layout of the foyer space and reception desk and optimise the location of stores and areas which may require materials with greater durability. This service is unique and will ensure that the design is efficient, circulation is kept to a minimum (but not undersized) and allows operators to input into the process to ensure their requirements are fully met. QMS Strategy We sat down and ran through key lessons learnt at critical stages of the project and held regular design and technical audits of the scheme as part of the overall QMS within GT3. This helped to control change and ensured any issues found within the team, were not repeated during the following RIBA stages. Value engineering occurred throughout the process, which enhanced the design at the same time saving over £1.6m in capital cost. Our QMS strategy monitors the quality of our information being distributed from our office. BIM GT3 Architects fully co-ordinated the design process with the other consultants and met regularly with the project manager to ensure the project was co-ordinated. As we work in Revit (BIM), we are able to work with the project team more accurately on area, material quantities, interface details and schedules taken from the model. On this project, it helped to control cost and make sure through clash detection, that the scheme entered site fully tested with supply chain integration. Shared Space Study Working with the operator (SLM) and the client team we went through a detailed shared space study during stage 3 which focused on programme of use and flexibility of space. This saved over 700sqm of facility area and £1.2m in capital cost. Successful Delivery: • Provides sports, leisure, physical, health and wellbeing for local people and clubs. Consultation with the local park community group has helped to inform the design. • Is an exemplar crime prevention model, where we worked very closely with the police to design a safe environment. • Similar town centre regeneration development. This scheme illustrates that GT3 Architects can deliver buildings that regenerate areas of town and city centres and provides a high quality benchmark for other buildings to follow. • The scheme was designed using a BIM Level 2 federated model which led to minimal disruption on site, helping to maintain the programme and cost. • The plan is simple to understand and navigate with very few corridors and simple journey flow based on us using our crowd modelling package which is unique to GT3 Architects. The scheme has also been designed to be fully accessible, including being dementia friendly.