Willmott Dixon’s £40m Nottinghamshire school: phasing and low‑carbon design notes
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Willmott Dixon has broken ground on the £40m rebuild of Outwood Academy Kirkby in Nottinghamshire, delivering a new secondary and sixth-form campus for 900 pupils to replace 1970s buildings under the DfE’s national school rebuilding programme. Designed by ADP Architecture, the scheme includes purpose-built science, drama and technology classrooms, an all-weather pitch, multi-use games courts and play areas, with heating and power from air source heat pumps and solar panels. Construction will be phased using a temporary teaching block to maintain operations until the main building opens in the 2028/29 school year, after which existing structures will be demolished for final sports provision.
Technical Brief
- £40m contract value sets budget envelope for structure, envelope, M&E and external works.
- Delivery must comply with the Department for Education’s latest output specification for new schools.
- Phasing relies on a temporary teaching block operating adjacent to retained 1970s sports facilities.
- Existing buildings are only demolished after decant, constraining early-stage site logistics and crane positions.
- Outwood Academy Kirkby is Willmott Dixon’s third scheme for Outwood Grange Academies Trust, aiding design standardisation.
- Willmott Dixon’s portfolio includes the £39m Hopwood Hall College and £20.7m Durham Academy, indicating comparable scale.
- Contractor is one of 23 firms on the DfE’s £15.4bn Construction Framework 25, securing pipeline visibility.
- Prior delivery of the UK’s first Passivhaus Plus school suggests potential adoption of high-performance fabric and services strategies.
Our Take
With 23 contractors named on Construction Framework 25, repeat wins for Willmott Dixon at Outwood Academy Kirkby, Hopwood Hall College and Brian Clarke Academy suggest it is positioning for a sizeable share of England’s school rebuilding workload through standardised design and delivery teams.
Education and leisure schemes such as Outwood Academy Kirkby and Portsmouth’s Bransbury Park leisure centre in our database show Willmott Dixon concentrating on mid- to high-value public-sector projects in England’s regions, which typically offer steadier workflows than one-off mega-projects for supply chains and design partners like ADP Architecture.
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.
