Royce Discovery

The Royce Discovery Centre is an innovation research-focused building for the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sheffield. As a major partner of The Henry Royce Institute, the University of Sheffield has been awarded £34 million to fund the commercialisation of fundamental research into advanced metals processing. This is one of two facilities built for this purpose, the first being the Royce Translational Centre.  

The centres will help them build on the University’s advanced manufacturing capabilities and transfer their knowledge and expertise to local industry – their engineers will use the research from the Royce Discovery Centre to evolve novel materials and processing techniques, making them accessible for trial by industry. There is a mixture of laboratory spaces and a double-height workshop area. The Centre will house a combination of Henry Royce Institute capability and Materials Science and Engineering equipment currently located in the Sir Robert Hadfield Building.  

In total the project amounted to just over 1,000m² of flooring throughout the building and included working with vinyl, carpet tiles, Marmoleum and entrance flooring as well as applying latex screed and DPM to the subfloor. 

A large part of this project was using Forbo Marmoleum Ohmex within the laboratory and circulation areas on the first floor. Marmoleum Ohmex is a linoleum floor covering that meets higher requirements for electrical conductivity. This ensures personal safety and protects equipment that is sensitive to static electricity, like computers and other electronic devices. This was important as these areas included characterisation, chemistry and laser laboratories where important research would be taking place when the centre was opened. Installing Marmoleum requires a lot of skill due to the thickness and make-up of the material, something which our fitters are trained to do. As well as the Marmoleum Ohmex, we fitted Marmoleum Real Marbled in the lobbies, landings and stairwells. 

We also fitted around 150m² of carpet tiles in the office and mezzanine areas of the building using Desso Metallic Shades. There was pattern work with these tiles which included a fading-out style layout of the tiles in the mezzanine area, which we completed successfully in accordance with the clients wishes.  

This was a challenging but successful project by all.