Council Offices, Derby

Built in 1949, these council offices required an extensive overhaul to ensure they were fit for the future. The major refurbishment of the building was designed to accommodate 2,000 council staff and cost £34 million to redevelop. The refurbishment project was completed in 2012.

Naturally, the forward-thinking council wanted to lead the way in sustainable design. To align with this, they targeted a BREEAM rating of excellent. This was achieved by incorporating various sustainability technologies including hydroelectric power generation from the nearby river, solar PV, rainwater harvesting and passive cooling systems.

Stormsaver were called upon by the facility management team caring for the building to completely replace the original rainwater harvesting system installed in 2010. The original system had reached the end of its useful life and was deemed beyond economical repair.

Our estimators were able to design a new solution to reliably harvest rainwater for toilet flushing once again. The location of the site proved challenging with high volumes of bird debris from the neighbouring river. This required a low-maintenance solution in the form of our automatic backwash filtration system and UV disinfection to provide a high-quality water supply.