The Oldham Leisure Centre Project is the flagship, town centre gateway building, which involves the creation of a new sports and leisure centre to replace the existing dated building. Retaining most of the facilities, the new centre includes a 8-lane 25m pool with spectator seating, Learner Pool, 100 station fitness suite, 3 studios, health suite, 8 court sports hall with a dry diving facility and has been enlarged to accommodate international badminton, handball, netball, 6 rink bowls facility and a large café. It acts as a high quality gateway building which connects the civic centre to this end of the town and creates a centre of excellence for both athletes and the community. Successful Delivery: Our Affordable solution (ARC) formed the foundation of the scheme and reduced cost and programme time, whilst allowing the client to input more than usual into the design development. Regular reviews with the project and client team, led by GT3 Architects. This included regular value engineering workshops with the client and operating team. The budget set at Stage 3 matched the final account figure. These workshops contributed to this success regarding final costs. Our strength in value engineering, improved buildability to the scheme, at the same time as reducing cost. We engaged constantly with the contractor as well regarding buildability early on. Local supply chain specification which was led by GT3 Architects and helped reduce cost of packages and gained critical BREEAM points under sustainability. Early recommendations for key environmental and sustainable measures were introduced, allowing these to be costed and included at an early stage. Scope of Works: The building has been designed as an iconic gateway building into the town centre, accommodating a mix of wet and dry facilities all designed and delivered by GT3 Architects. Detailed stakeholder consultation with Oldham College which adjoins the centre (similar to this project), the operator (OCL), local residents, 12 different sports clubs and the local community. Disability provision has gone beyond Part M and is accessible to all groups, with unique measures (such as access to the pool using a “pool pod”) used as an industry first. Myrtha pool technology provides a one stop shop for the council regarding the pool construction. This reduced cost and saved 3 months on the overall programme time. Landscape integrates with the building and creates a wow factor on approach. Flexibility in most of the internal public spaces helped to reduce area and therefore cost. Working with the operator, we reduced the number of spaces required by working with their programme of use, saving over 500sqm. Building utilises slope of the site to accommodate swimming pool, reducing excavation. The slope of the site allowed the plant to be located below the pool tanks, but remaining accessible from the ground level.