Manchester campus blocks Gateway 2: design and safety notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Gateway 2 approval has been granted by the Building Safety Regulator for the first two higher-risk buildings in Viridis Living’s Fallowfield Campus redevelopment at the University of Manchester, both 14-storey blocks providing 205 and 207 beds. The consortium of Equitix, John Graham Construction and Derwent FM has submitted seven HRBs in total, with structural works on the first two to start this month after a 15-week turnaround from planning to approval. Key technical choices include a precast cross-wall system and extended concrete use for inherent fire resistance, within a 3,300-bed masterplan targeting Passivhaus certification at European scale and BREEAM Excellent.
Technical Brief
- Gateway 2 review centred on detailed technical compliance, demanding tightly co-ordinated multi-disciplinary design information.
- Adoption of a precast cross-wall structural system was selected to rationalise load paths and simplify detailing.
- Extended use of in-situ and precast concrete provides inherent fire resistance, reducing reliance on applied fire protection.
- Simplified façade co-ordination was achieved by aligning cladding interfaces with the regularised precast wall grid.
- Early supply chain engagement fed specialist fire, structural and façade input into the design before Gateway 2 submission.
Our Take
Among the 600 Infrastructure stories in our database, very few UK higher-risk residential schemes report Building Safety Regulator approvals within about 15 weeks of planning consent, suggesting the Fallowfield Campus HRB process is moving at the faster end of current practice.
With seven higher-risk buildings submitted and only two cleared so far, Viridis Living and the University of Manchester are effectively piloting a multi-asset approval pathway under the post-Grenfell regime, which other large campus or estate redevelopments in the United Kingdom are likely to watch closely for precedents on sequencing and documentation.
Creating five distinct neighbourhoods at Fallowfield Campus positions this Manchester scheme alongside a small subset of campus-scale regeneration projects in our coverage that blend student housing with mixed-use urban design, which typically see tighter scrutiny on both Safety and Sustainability outcomes than single-block infill developments.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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