Victoria Primary School, Edinburgh

Victoria Primary School, Edinburgh

Client: City of Edinburgh Council
Architect: Holmes Miller
Cost: £12.0m

New Victoria Primary school is the second in the stream of primary schools being delivered by WRD for the City of Edinburgh Council. Located on the Western Harbour development site, the school is to replace the aging and oversubscribed current Victoria Primary school. The site for the school is on the reclaimed harbour and forms part of the masterplan for the area. WRD have been working with the client and the design team from the outset of this project to facilitate the transfer of land to the council. The site is based on fill and WRD have designed the site investigation with this in mind. The results of this SI is that the school is designed on piled foundations with a steel frame.

The school is currently two stream but has capacity to extend to three stream and this is considered when detailing the foundation ground beams to allow for subsequent expansion when required. the school takes many of the principals from the first in the stream, Broomhills Primary School and WRD have used the knowledge gained in this first school project to improve the development of this second school. This has included working out key details for the first school and utilising them in the second where we can. This has additional benefits in this team set up as the same contractor is building all three schools, therefore the work we have done in ensuring the detail is clear and understood by the contractor is then automatically of benefit in the construction of the subsequent schools.