The £1bn Paddington Village project is a 30-acre development in Liverpool City’s Knowledge Quarter which will develop 1.8m square feet of science, technology, education and health space. Vital Energi were initially appointed on a pre-construction services agreement and worked in partnership with the developer, Morgan Sindall, to design an energy solution which would evolve alongside the development’s build out and deliver maximum decarbonisation. Our solution was a ground-floor energy centre which would later have a multi-storey car park built above it. Heat is distributed via a district heating network and electricity via a high voltage private wire network. After developing the energy infrastructure concept, we were appointed to a design, build, operation and maintenance contract to deliver the full energy solution.
The new energy scheme serves the entire Paddington Village site, with the energy centre sitting on the ground floor of a 14-storey car park which was built later in the process. The energy centre houses a 1.1MWe / 1.3MWth CHP engine which will provide both heat and electricity. Morgan Sindall constructed the energy centre and car park, with Vital Energi fitting out the building.
Much of the project was delivered during the Covid-19 pandemic which caused some disruption and required a flexible outlook towards the fit-out works and, crucially, to ensure that our programme fit in with the wider Paddington Village development as seamlessly as possible.
The first phase of Paddington Village is the central development which is comprised of a mixture of residential, commercial, hotels and laboratories.
We worked in partnership with the client to enhance the design of the energy infrastructure, create the energy model and look at various commercial options for the ESCo.
Unusually, we created a 3D model of the energy centre during the bid stage to help the client visualise the scheme and this proved successful, with Andy Dinnage, Head of Building Services – North Construction for Morgan Sindall saying, “In the pre-construction period, Vital couldn’t do enough for us, they found solutions to any and every challenge. Vital demonstrated an understanding of their audience who hadn’t completed a district heating scheme before and the bid document and videos helped the client team visualise the complexity, and scope and scale of the project.”
Our initial contribution involved working with the client’s team to enhance the design of the energy infrastructure. Once the optimum design had been finalised, we then delivered the energy centre, district heating network and private wire network to meet the client’s challenging time scales.
The client complimented the transition from the pre-construction services agreement to the design, build operation and maintenance contract, crediting their early and continued involvement in the project for making it a positive experience.
One of the most significant modifications we made on Paddington Village was to change the design of the original “stand alone” energy centre. This was made necessary due to the civil and structural challenges of the local Williamson tunnels which underpinned the proposed standalone site location, as well as the adjacent railway cutting. Our enhanced solutions created the energy centre on the ground floor of a planned multi-storey car park with the additional floors being added later in the construction programme. This saved the developer significant space on the development, which brought substantial CAPEX costs.
The new solution created some challenges, but our team were able to create design solutions to overcome these. One example of this was that the ground floor solution restructured the natural crossflow ventilation, but our designer created a mechanical ventilation solution which compensated for this.
Rob Wallace Associate Director -Walker Sime explained, “ Vital have well worked with us as a team to come to a solution which has changed significantly from the first proposal. WSP carried out a detailed review of the design and came back with queries to Vital at bid stage. Vital came back with answers straight away. They are a company that are solution based rather than problem based. We are in good hands with regards to risk.”