Donaldson’s College
Client
Donaldson's Trust
Sector
Education
Services provided
Options Appraisal,
Cost Advice,
Specification & Design Consultation,
Donaldson’s College
The now former Donaldson’s College, Edinburgh, is a high profile, listed building. When the Donaldson Trust was considering options to ensure that the education it provided for Scotland’s deaf and language impaired children was exemplary, the asset was examined to ensure it remained fit for purpose for a modern special education needs school.
PMP was appointed to guide the Trust through the process of analysing the entire estate, considering options for new build, extensions or remodelling the existing building with the ultimate goal of optimising the estate and delivering a worldclass education facility.
Through various exercises, it was concluded that the listed building was not a suitable option to educate from and its value would be better realised through a private sale to allow a new, state of the art school to be created on a new out of town campus.
PMP provided options that included partial sale of the site and sale of the whole site, with the sale of the whole site being the optimum solution.
PMP then worked with the Trust to develop a brief for the new school including classroom sizes, number of classrooms required, sport and exercise requirements including swimming pools and residential accommodation for around 90 pupils and 100 staff. From this brief, PMP worked with the Trust to identify a number of sites and provided a report on the best option to maximise the opportunity for the new school and the budget from the sale of the existing building and land. Within this recommendation, PMP also provided outline costs for the whole development including construction costs, legal and planning costs.
Through a competitive process, JM Architects was appointed to deliver the design for the new school which is located in Linlithgow. PMP and JM Architects worked together to achieve planning and appoint a contractor to deliver the £17.5M new build school to the required specification with a lifespan of 60 years as a minimum.
