Last month saw the opening of the British Antarctic Survey’s £100m Discovery Building at its Rothera Research Station – the biggest construction project ever undertaken by the UK in Antarctica with construction carried out over seven years during the region’s austral summers.
The two-storey, 4,500-sq-m building brings together scientific support and operational activities under one roof for the first time, replacing six older buildings.
The 100-room project was delivered on time and under budget, while integrating several green features, described as being able to reduce carbon emissions at Rothera by 25%.
GCR spoke to David Brand, a senior project manager at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) about the completed building, its green features and working in the Antarctic.
Work began on the Discovery Building in 2019. What preparations were needed before each short construction season?
Well, there’s obviously a lot of effort with the preconstruction, with the development of the design and procuring the materials and consumables that are shipped and delivered beforehand. It’s not as though you can go to a trade store and pick up materials, so we really have to think ahead, which means not only thorough design and testing, but also digital modelling.
For the supply chain we go through a series of constructibility workshops to determine how designs are delivered, we also develop activity plans around activities on site and conduct training using digital models, creating a mock-up of structural elements in the UK before teams arrive in Rothera, so that we can get it right first time on site.
We also create integration plans for the station, plus plans for traffic management, snow management, operation and construction activity.
So the short answer is: a lot of planning.
We also work with the base programme office on how we’re going to ship resources needed to complete construction using the RRS Sir David Attenborough and aircraft. So it’s not solely about construction activity but also how you get people to and from the Antarctic.
How do you handle the weather?
You can never be quite sure what the weather’s going to be doing in the Antarctic, so you may need to prioritise, such as leaving external works for more favourable weather.
You have to think around weather challenges and the fact you’re constrained by a six month construction season and also how you leave the construction site prepared for winter so you can pick up work the next summer.
Can techniques used at Rothera provide lessons for more conventional settings?
We try to modularise as much as we can and use standardised material as it creates less of an operational burden during servicing and maintenance.
We use a federated digital model which is really helpful from the project delivery side of things, as well as information management.
A digital inventory system in the building’s central store speeds up our relief period, where you take material off the ship and move it to the base.
How will the Discovery Building cut carbon emissions?
There’s a holistic approach. The Discovery Building replaces six existing buildings, which lets us deliver operations with a smaller footprint while maintaining a similar gross internal area.
Less snow needs to be cleared as the team is working in one space. A 90m-long curved wind deflector stretches all the way along the southern elevation, reducing snow build up and allowing year round access to the building from all sides.
An aerial picture of Rothera Station (BAS)The Discovery Building has a 90m-long central corridor running from one end of the building to the other across both floors, so people don’t need to put their boots on and go out of the building through multiple entrances, letting cold air in.
We can “winterise” sections of the building when occupancy is lower, modifying the amount of ventilation and heating based on the use of certain zones. We’re basically not blasting heat into areas when there’s no one actually working there.
Where before we might have had a space that a group of people need for, say, two or three weeks a year, now we have spaces people can use for different things at different times.
We designed a cladding that firmly insulates the building. We put solar panels on the building’s north elevation. We also looked at how to recover waste heat from our systems and reuse it through our district heating network.
The building should reduce our long term maintenance burden so fewer people will work at Rothera maintaining the estate, with more focus on science and less on running operations. That’s the plan.
Our design considers how operations will change over time. The building is designed to be operational until 2060, although it’ll be 25 years before we need to do any major works on it.
How are people finding working in the Discovery Building so far?
We do our full post-occupancy evaluation within the first year of it being fully operational but, from the feedback we’re getting, people really enjoy working in it. It’s a cleaner, drier, warmer and more practical environment.
What else is happening at Rothera?
We have five more years on the current Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation Programme (AIMP), so there are other projects going into their construction phases from next season.
We’re building a new hangar. It’s currently in preconstruction with work due to start on site in the 2027-28 season.
We’re looking at bringing in more renewable technology over the next couple of years, whether it be through further solar panels or battery storage.
We’re constantly learning. I think any project manager will tell you this, but it’s absolutely fantastic to see the client reap the benefits of that hard work from everyone in the construction partnership. That’s the joy of building project management, isn’t it?
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British Antarctic Survey starts using new Discovery Building New research building in Antarctica sealed in time for winterHow you build at the bottom of the world Global Construction Review.
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