Clays Lake Operations Building

Duration
11 months

The Brief

• Clay’s Lake is part of a flood alleviation scheme, which will drastically reduce the flood risk to more than 280 homes in the local area, and to Gatwick Airport.
• The lake and surrounding landscape commemorates the late George Frederick Clay, who died in 1985 and is the husband of the landowner Mrs Leta Clay.
• The task of Hawes Construction Group was to construct an operations building for the use of Environment Agency staff when they visit the area, with a toilet, kitchen, and a place to store machinery and plant material.

Our Solution

• We built the steel frame of the single-storey building and covered it with cladding, adding roller shutter doors.
• We then installed the kitchenette and toilet facilities.
• This structure had to be built to accommodate any floodwaters. As it was on a floodplain, surrounded by a reservoir, we needed to make sure the building would be safe.
• Part of the brief was that the building needed to have a small environmental footprint. To achieve this, we installed a tank to collect water, which would need to be turned on in order to flush the toilet. This utilised greywater, which is water that has been used previously in the building through sinks and washing facilities.
• This meant that the water usage was dramatically reduced.

The Result

• Hawes Construction Group were able to complete the project on time and on budget, to the highest specifications.
• The client now had a fully functional operations building that they could use for a range of purposes.
• Mackley and the Environment Agency were very happy with our work, and we were delighted to have contributed to the environmental stability of the local area.

Further notes:

mackley.co.uk/capabilities/fluvial/clays-lake/