Supporting the delivery of a modern education facility through technical building services advisory
Modern education buildings need to do far more than provide additional space. They must support comfort, flexibility, safety, energy performance, digital learning, and long-term estate value.
Exeter College’s new £12 million Centre for Law and Social Sciences was developed to expand teaching capacity and create a high-quality learning environment for students. Spanning four floors, the building provides 25 new classrooms, dedicated study areas, and specialist facilities, including a moot courtroom to support applied legal education.
The project also presented a complex building services challenge. Delivering a high-capacity facility across a multi-level campus site required careful coordination of mechanical and electrical services, robust technical review, and close attention to compliance, performance, and handover standards.
Oatway Design’s role
Oatway Design Ltd provided building services technical advisory support throughout the project, helping to review, challenge, and validate the contractor’s mechanical and electrical design proposals.
Our role included full contract technical advisory support over an eight-month period, with both on-site and off-site assistance. This included reviewing the nominated contractor’s RIBA Stage 4 mechanical and electrical services design proposals to assess alignment with the original brief, performance specifications, and project requirements.
We also reviewed contractor design submissions against relevant statutory, sustainability, and performance requirements, helping to support a compliant and future-conscious building services strategy.
Throughout the construction phase, Oatway Design maintained close liaison with the nominated contractor, providing technical assistance, responding to design queries, and supporting coordination across the wider project team.
Our work also included the independent review of equipment schedules, technical submissions, material proposals, equipment capacities, and component performance limits. This helped provide assurance that the selected systems were appropriate for the building’s intended use and long-term operation.
Delivering value through technical oversight
For a project of this scale and educational importance, building services quality is critical. Systems must not only meet design requirements on paper; they must perform reliably in practice.
Through proactive technical oversight, Oatway Design helped ensure that the mechanical and electrical systems were reviewed against the required quality, compliance, and performance standards before and during delivery.
Our site inspections and pre-completion snagging reviews supported installation quality and helped identify issues ahead of handover. This provided the client and project team with greater confidence that the completed building would be ready to support students, staff, and operational teams from day one.
Why this project matters
The Centre for Law and Social Sciences represents a significant investment in Exeter College’s long-term educational capability. By replacing outdated infrastructure with a modern, purpose-built facility, the project creates new opportunities for teaching, study, collaboration, and specialist academic development. Oatway Design’s technical advisory involvement helped underpin that ambition by supporting the delivery of robust, regulation-compliant, and performance-focused mechanical and electrical systems.
Good building services design is often invisible when it works well. But in educational environments, it plays a vital role in creating spaces where people can focus, learn, collaborate, and thrive.
This project reflects Oatway Design’s commitment to practical, technically rigorous building services engineering that supports long-term building performance and meaningful client outcomes.
