Hox Park Student Residences

The “benchmark for high quality student accommodation”, the £36m Hox Park Student Residences project has transformed a former disused Brunel University Campus into a modern development of four new residential blocks, consisting of 499 bed spaces. Located in Runnymede, Surrey, most famous for being the location where the Magna Carta was sealed over 800 years ago, the scheme was completed ahead of the 2018/2019 academic year, providing much needed accommodation and social amenity space for close to 500 university students.

Praised by the Royalton Group for “exceeding expectations”, the Hox Park project has reinvented a previously unloved site and created a thriving student community. Comprising 189 studio units, 299 cluster bedrooms and 51 shared kitchens, the development significantly enhances the “student experience” through the provision of welfare space, group study rooms, student hubs and a sports pavilion.

Having been awarded this contract as a result of our alternative two-stage solution, we brought the scheme into affordability through the identification of £1.3m (3.6%) in savings during the pre-construction phase. An accelerated Preconstruction Services Agreement was then put in place with the initial design at RIBA Stage 3. Renowned for enhancing outcomes, we introduced a series of innovative measures, which, combined, helped to reduce the programme by ten weeks while creating 11 additional units. These included the introduction of a precast concrete frame, a precast solution for rooms, the relocation/reconfiguration of plant from the basement area to roof level, an amended ventilation strategy and the re-optimisation of room layouts.