BAS Frames delivered SFS rooftop extensions and standalone steel kitchen and common room structures across 25 student accommodation blocks at Seething Wells Campus, Kingston upon Thames — completing each block in 2 weeks, with students living on site throughout.
Working for Engie over a 24-month programme, each of the 25 blocks was renovated and extended to add modern student bedrooms, a common area and a shared kitchen.
25 blocks, 2 weeks each
The figure that matters on this project is 2 weeks per block. Repeated across 25 blocks, that consistency is what made the scheme viable — it let Engie plan student decants block by block with confidence, rather than emptying the campus.
Repetition is where light steel is at its strongest. The first block resolves the details; every one after it is a known quantity. The frame is manufactured to the same drawings, the sequence is already proven, and the crew works a rhythm they have run before.
Building with students in residence
The campus stayed occupied. Students were living, sleeping and studying in the blocks either side of live construction for the full 24 months.
That ruled out heavy machinery on site. All materials were transported vertically using a single forklift — for a 25-block programme adding a full storey to each.
This is the clearest demonstration of what a light steel system actually offers a constrained site. Every component is light enough that one forklift can service the whole operation. No tower crane, no road closures, no exclusion zones cutting across a campus students need to walk through.
Standalone KCR structures, linked to existing buildings
Each block received fully built steel kitchens and common rooms (KCR), designed as standalone structures and then linked into the renovated buildings beneath.
Building them as independent structures rather than extensions of the existing frame meant the new work did not depend on the condition or capacity of what was already there — useful across 25 buildings of the same age, where the as-built rarely matches the record drawings and no two are wrong in quite the same way.
What 25 repeats do to a programme
A 2-week block rate is not the rate the first block ran at. Early blocks carry the cost of learning: resolving details, proving the sequence, discovering where the existing buildings differ from their record drawings.
What repetition buys is that every one of those lessons is banked. By the middle of a 25-block programme the crew is running a rhythm, the material call-offs are predictable, and the client can plan student decants against a rate they can rely on.
This is the strongest argument for light steel on any repeating scheme — student accommodation, hotels, housing of a standard type. The saving is not in a single block. It is in the 24 that follow it.
Project facts
- Client: Engie
- Location: Seething Wells Campus, Kingston upon Thames KT6 5PJ
- Scope: SFS rooftop extensions and standalone steel KCR structures across 25 blocks
- Rate: 2 weeks per block
- Duration: 24 months
- Constraint: Active student occupancy, no heavy machinery, single forklift for all vertical transport
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