Playdays Nursery and Day Care Centre Kier Moss is celebrating scooping a South West Built Environment Award in the Integration and Collaborative Working category for work carried out on three PVI (private, voluntary and independent) nurseries in the region.

The awards were hosted by the South West area of Constructing Excellence – the organisation charged with driving the change agenda in construction and improving industry performance in order to produce a better built environment.

As part of the Gloucestershire County Council Framework, Kier Moss and its framework partners EG Carter and Spellar Metcalfe, completed nine children’s centres in total. Kier Moss built three - The Playdays Nursery and Day Care Centre, Longelm Children's Centre, and the Lighthouse Children's Centre and Pebbles Nursery. All three form part of a scheme to improve facilities for young people in the county and were funded by the Sure Start and Early Years Childcare Grant.


Each centre was built on the site of an existing school and the framework partners demonstrated effective collaborative working, including a series of joint workshops and consultation with the end users, to ensure each project was planned and carried out to cause minimal disruption to the schools and local residents.

Once complete the centres were all handed over to be ran as non-profit organisations and for this reason the future maintenance and running costs of the centres was also an important consideration for all partners throughout. Discussions were held to agree common ground on many factors of the buildings, including insulation and materials used, resulting in the minimisation of lifetime costs for all three nurseries.

Commenting on the award win, Kier Moss Framework Manager Alan Wooldridge said: "Kier Moss won the Constructing Excellence Integrative and Collaborative award with Gloucestershire County Council last year, and it is fitting that the Gloucestershire County Council Framework partners have been recognised this year for taking the next innovative step of total collaboration, involving all three contractors on the framework."

(CD/GK)