#GreenTransition

Keynsham Recycling Hub, Somerset

Sweco acted as lead engineering consultants alongside Farrans Construction on a state-of-the-art recycling centre for client Bath & North East Somerset Council. The hub is designed to deliver direct service improvements for residents, overall service future-proofing and effectiveness, and enable the council to achieve broader sustainability and policy targets.

Our team has been proud to deliver Keynsham Recycling Hub, a state-of-the-art facility which offers its visitors a truly sustainable experience by encouraging reuse and recycling in line with the council’s Climate and Ecological Emergency policy aims. With its own onsite power generation capabilities, this hub is an example of what can be created with innovation and collaboration.

Clare Taylor Contracts Manager at Farrans Construction

We are proud to have provided lead consultancy in engineering and architectural services to Farrans Construction for an award-winning, state-of-the-art recycling hub in Somerset.

Our expertise and understanding of the waste sector allowed us to develop and modify the original proposals to better meet the needs of Bath & North East Somerset Council and its waste operator, providing an efficient centre to maximise recycling and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill – not least in the design of a materials recovery facility that enables ‘smart’ separation of household waste into waste streams of paper, metal, aluminum and glass for processing.

Key Sweco expertise provided

  • Lead Consultant
  • Structural Engineering
  • Civil Engineering
  • Architecture (Designscape Architects as Subconsultant)
  • Geoenvironmental

The new £41m Keynsham facility – formerly the Pixash Recycling Centre – has been built to support the circular economy, by allowing residents to more easily reuse, recycle and ultimately reduce waste.

In line with the council’s climate and ecological ambitions, Keynsham’s new hub has a 3800m2 (783KWp) solar PV array on the buildings’ roofs and also incorporates rainwater harvesting to collect water that can in turn be used for vehicle washing and plant watering.

The new materials recovery facility includes the latest sorting and baling equipment while a vast wooden-roofed salt and gritting barn will ensure easy access and winter gritting to nearby roads, including the A4.

The four-hectare site also incorporates a Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) designed using split-level facilities to enable step-free access to recycling bins, a Reuse shop for items to be sold to others.

The Keynsham Recycling Hub was recently announced as the winner of a prestigious RICS South West award in the Public Sector category, with judging panel chair James Wakeham commenting: “The talent and collaborative approaches undertaken by the teams behind these projects have resulted in exemplary and innovative schemes that really do represent the very best built projects across the South West.”

Reflecting on the project, Sweco regional director Nick Ash says:

“Farrans and I have known each other for about 40 years, and have worked together on various projects like Keynsham across the UK. Over that time we’ve crafted a tried and tested way of designing buildings and infrastructure to meet the many nuances of disposal and sorting sites – particularly for material recycling facilities and waste transfer stations.

We’ve found that because we know – quite literally – the ins and outs of those sites and how to deliver to the needs of both client and end-users, there’s less going back and forth as the project moves along – with no need for unnecessary remediating of designs or works as we go.

 

“Our long relationship has also allowed us to build a strong mutual trust. A recycling facility is obviously a heavy-duty operation, so on a basic level your structure of course has to be very robust. But there are so many other things at play that need careful, intricate consideration.

For example, we provided a completely different solution during the contractor’s tender proposals stage to the original waste transfer station and materials recycling facility plans based on our knowledge of usage variables, and we slightly altered the strategy for the household waste recycling centre as well based on previous experiences of doing split level recycling centres.”

Expanding upon Sweco’s unique brand of ‘above-and-beyond’ consultancy, Nick explains:

“For me, a big advantage of drawing upon the waste engineering knowledge we have under one roof at Sweco is coupling our multi-disciplinary engineering acumen with the lived experience we have of how a facility like this really works.

It’s not just about technical understanding of structures and civils. It’s about really getting under the skin of what needs to go where and when. The demands of a recycling site can and do change on an hourly basis, so its design needs to be agile, and stress-tested from the early stages of planning to ensure it’s situation-proof.

For example, because we know the waste stream inside out, we know exactly how the different machines, vehicle routes, bin collection timings need to join-up for efficient operations end-to-end – and this all underpins the end build beyond simply considering materials and designing a great looking shell.

It’s this bigger picture value-add that sets us apart in my opinion. It can be tempting for consultants and contractors to focus solely on their ‘slice’ of a project and just run with the baton that gets passed to them so to speak – to perhaps simply design a structure that won’t fall down and move onto the next job. But we know that a silo’d, tunnel-vision approach ultimately increases risk for all concerned…so questioning everything from a wider vantage point is essential.

And what makes waste so appealing as a structural engineering specialism?

“I’ve always enjoyed doing waste projects. Just knowing that the waste we help clients sort goes into a circular economy is a source of pride for me. As is creating a safe and efficient environment for people to do it in.

Done well, hubs like Keynsham can change the narrative on throwing things away, and get us to a place where ‘waste’ doesn’t have to be a dirty word.”