Offsite Solutions, the UK’s leading bathroom pod manufacturer, has been awarded its fourth project for student accommodation developer, urbanest. The £1.8m contract is to manufacture over 500 high specification ensuite shower pods for urbanest City in London.
The £90m mixed use student scheme at Vine Street in the City of London is under construction by Balfour Beatty and will deliver 656 student beds alongside 75,000sqft of commercial offices and 10,000 sqft of incubator space for start-up businesses.
Offsite Solutions has a longstanding relationship with urbanest, having supplied bathroom pods for other high-quality student schemes across London. By moving bathroom construction into a controlled factory environment, fewer materials and labour are required on site which is a key benefit for a constrained central London site.
Angus Kearin, Head of Development at urbanest said,
“Building bathrooms offsite for multi-occupancy buildings such as student accommodation makes really good sense in our view, particularly in the centre of London. Maximising offsite construction saves a huge amount of work on site and allows us to dispense with several processes. The quality of bathroom pods is superior, and delivery is consistently on time and on budget.”
“We have worked with Offsite Solutions very successfully on a number of our projects. They collaborate with our design and construction teams to give us exactly the right product offer for our students. Their logistics and the reliability and quality control of their pod manufacturing process are unparalleled in the market.”
The ensuite shower rooms for urbanest City will have a premium steel-framed construction and are fully fitted out in the factory to reduce work on site to just a few hours. Features include large format porcelain floor and wall tiles in an anthracite grey matt finish, a large picture mirror set into the tiles, wall-mounted toilet and basin, glass vanity shelf, LED lighting, shaver socket, towel rail, and thermostatic shower with bi-fold glass door. A number of the pods also have heated walls.
Offsite Solutions is also manufacturing 46 accessible pods designed in line with DDA requirements to allow easy wheelchair access. These shower rooms are floorless to achieve a continuous level floor and have wall-mounted and drop-down grab rails, two wash hand basins at different heights, an extended WC pan and a fold-down seat in the shower.
In addition to managing the complexities of supplying pods to a site of historical importance, Offsite Solutions has the design and production capabilities and robust processes to manufacture and fit out 11 different pod types for this project. Each pod will be produced for a precise location within the building to ensure a highly efficient delivery and installation programme can be implemented. The pods will be installed using a tower crane.
The Vine Street project will transform a historically sensitive site into a new landmark structure and destination, with high-quality student homes, and office and retail space. The development also includes a public exhibition in the basement which houses a preserved section of the original Roman London city wall.
Offsite Solutions offers the UK’s largest range of pods to suit many different building types and applications. Options include steel-framed bathroom pods with porcelain-tiled finishes for high-end apartments, PRS, student residences and hotels; robust and low maintenance GRP composite shower pods for student accommodation, build-to-rent, care homes, social housing and healthcare; hybrid pods for specialist projects, and award-winning demountable GRP pods for ease of installation in refurbishment schemes. Offsite Solutions has also developed steel-framed utility pods for apartments or studios for build-to-rent or build-to-sell developments.
For further information, visit www.offsitesolutions.com, call 01278 780807 or email info(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)offsitesolutions.com.