Howden Building

As one of the original red brick universities and a part of the Russell Group, The University of Sheffield is a really important part of the city and along with Sheffield Hallam University brings in around 60,000 students to Sheffield every year. One of the main accommodation sites of the University of Sheffield is the Endcliffe Student Village. This student village is located between Fulwood Road and Endcliffe Vale road in West Sheffield.  

It accommodates the majority of the university’s first year students as well as some second and third years, postgraduates and student families. It was constructed in 2006 and has grown since then with the addition of the Ranmoor village alongside it. As a big student community, accommodating around 4,500 students every year it has various facilities on site including a shop, café, bar and laundrette to meet all the needs of its inhabitants. 

One of the largest buildings in the village is the Howden building and we had the pleasure of working on it as part of refurbishment plans for the village. The project totalled over 4,000m² of carpet tiles and luxury vinyl tiles in the apartments and circulation areas. The building consists of a number of different blocks, each containing separate flats.  

The works included a living/kitchen area, a number of bedrooms and a communal area for each flat. The timeline was very important for this particular job as we had to make sure we completed all the works within the 7-week deadline which was the length of the university holidays until students were due to return. We made sure we met this timescale whilst maintaining a high level of quality in our work.  

There were 35 flats in total, 5 flats with 5 beds, 10 flats with 7 beds and 20 flats with 8 beds. Each of the 255 bedrooms were covered with a heavy-duty carpet tile from Burmatex in a neutral blue colour, these tiles are perfect for high traffic areas and offer a 10-year warranty. We then fitted a wood effect LVT from Amtico into the kitchen/living and communal corridors in all the flats.  

With further university accommodation projects on the horizon, we hope to continue down this avenue on many more projects in the future.