Hornsea Leisure Centre

Overview

The vision of East Riding of Yorkshire Council was to transform Hornsea Leisure Centre into a ‘Community Hub’ offering a refurbished leisure centre with new facilities including an extended ‘Tone Zone’ overlooking the promenade, a new extended café area, new changing rooms, two refurbished squash courts and a dedicated spin and exercise studio.

The Hub promotes leisure and learning activities and is now the new home for the town’s library, customer service & resource centres & children’s centre.

The two-storey extension and high-quality landscaping provides a "major new focal point" for the central promenade with the facility benefiting both residents and visitors.

Challenges and Solutions

Mason Clark Associates (MCA) provided Structural and Civil Engineering services to East Riding of Yorkshire Council for this transformational project.

The project itself tested the skills of our MCA engineers in a number of ways, here are a few examples of the challenges faced and how they were overcome:

• Civil Engineering Services: situated near the sea and with increased concerns over possible flood risks, our MCA engineers compiled a flood risk assessment report utilising residual site features and flood resilience.

• Structural Engineering Services: the difficult ground conditions on site led to additional site investigations to assess measures that needed to be taken. The requirement of column-free areas and a large glazed elevation, the added complication of vibration from the gymnasium were some of the design challenges requiring consideration, along with limited headroom, tight and restricted access within the existing building, the need for temporary works and access routes in the existing structure were all factored into the design process.

MCA's Contribution

To deliver our services to the highest quality we established a project communication plan at the outset which was adhered to throughout allowing us to:

• Collaboratively plan resources and insert float times into our schedule to prevent any delays.

• Provide concept designs and structural input from an early stage.

• Provide engineering alternatives for consideration.

Specific design services were provided for:

• a steel framed extension with multi-deck floors, piled foundations and slab.

• a raft foundation for the existing building as well as a first-floor plate to the plant room with a new slab for the wet change area.

• structural design checks on the existing roofs.

• drainage design.

Results

The ‘Hornsea Hub’ represented the largest single investment the council had ever made.

The multi-million pound facility opened its doors for public use in October 2020 and is a significant community space on the Hornsea seafront which is enjoyed by residents and visitors alike.

The MCA project team worked at the heart of this fantastic project using their experience to work innovatively and collaboratively with all parties through all phases of the build process. East Riding of Yorkshire Council are a longstanding client of MCA, with the completion of ‘The Hub’ being one of many projects that we have delivered exceptional services for over a number of years.