UKAEA and STEP move into new offices at Culham Science Centre campus

The McBains designed facility will house approximately 600 staff, arranged over four floors providing a new modern, agile working environment focused on celebrating collaboration. The project is also supported by the delivery of additional car parking hubs located around the campus perimeter as part of UKAEA’s masterplan vision to shift towards a vehicle free campus centre.

The prominent, four-storey building will accommodate teams from the UKAEA STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) programme together with UKAEA management and operational staff.

Targeted with achieving a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating, the energy efficient building delivers approximately 7,500 sqm of flexible, BCO-compliant, open plan office accommodation; a main entrance lobby, with coffee bar facilities; a canteen; a range of meeting and conference facilities; welfare and ancillary accommodation and a new landscaped external plaza. The building has been designed to encourage collaboration and the sharing of ideas as well as prioritising the health and wellbeing of staff and users, providing excellent facilities to support walking and cycling to and around the campus, external terraces and garden amenity spaces and dedicated wellbeing facilities.

Anna Kealey, Director at McBains commented: “The Culham Science Centre campus, and the work that is undertaken there, is an integral component of the UK’s fusion energy revolution, and these new premises are befitting of the role its occupants will undoubtably play in the future of fusion, and innovation towards generating net energy from fusion”.

McBains provided architecture, cost management, structural and civil engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, lead designer, principal designer, BREEAM and BIM services to the scheme.