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Project Overview
Client
Brown's School
Location
Orpington, Kent
Date Complete
2023
Sector
Education
Background
Brown’s School in Orpington, Kent, was established in 1997 specially for children with dyslexia. It is one of the original dyslexia specialist schools. With 90 students, the school is a small, independent day school providing education to boys and girls aged from 9 to 18 years. Brown’s School caters to young people with Specific Learning Difficulties, including dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, or speech and language difficulties, autism, and ADD/ADHD. Lessons are tailored to meet the individual needs of each student, with a strong staff : pupil ratio. The school strives to create a positive, safe learning environment and make people feel valued giving opportunities for pupils to reach their full potential.
The school has a comprehensive health and safety policy which is reviewed every year, in which the duties of all members of staff are outlined. Duties include reporting any defects in equipment or facilities and taking an interest in health and safety matters; suggesting any appropriate changes to how the school can become safer by reducing injuries and accidents.
Originally, the school was demarcated with traditional wrought iron railings with finials, with the car park being surrounded by a footpath leading to and from the school buildings. With a number of cars coming and going at various times of day, a suggestion was highlighted by staff that fencing was required between the car park and the footpath to increase safety for students walking between different areas of the school.
Solution
To create a safe and secure school environment and segregate vehicles and pedestrians, our Barbican Imperial® steel railings were chosen. Over 86m of 1.8m high fencing and three gates were installed. Featuring welded pale-through-rail construction, no visible bolts, and tamper proof panel-to-post connectors, this steel railing fencing system is highly secure. With slender, rounded pales, it also presents a smart aesthetic which does not create a hostile environment, and closely matches the existing fencing and gates of which some remain.
Safety requirements were stipulated in the fencing contract; due to the children having special needs, the fence needed to be free from anything that could cause injury or could be inadvertently removed by students, creating an unsecure fence. This included having no visible bolts, and also the requirement for the pale tops to be capped to prevent a finger trap hazard or any sharp edges. Capping pales is always an option with our vertical bar fencing if required.
Due to the vertical pale design, hedgehogs and other wildlife are able to move freely past the fence, which for the school - situated on the edge of the Kent Downs - is important to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
The fence and gates were hot dip galvanised to protect them from rust and finished with an optional polyester powder coating in black RAL 9005. Polyester powder coating, unlike traditional painting, does not chip or crack and therefore the risk of sharp flakes of paint causing injury will not be a risk over time. In addition, the fence and gates are guaranteed for 25 years against rust and manufacturing defects. Having a long guarantee like this reduces the time spent repairing, replacing, and maintaining the fence aside from simple security checks, ensuring staff can dedicate their time to helping and educating the students.
To provide robust and reliable access control through the gates, we installed audio intercoms and pin pads, with gates having magnetic locks and self closers to prevent gates being accidentally left open.
At Jacksons, we can work around your school or business hours to create an installation schedule that works for you. For this school, we tailored working hours around the school times in order to minimise interference, working from 9-5pm and taking a break between 3 and 4pm to allow cars in to collect children. All our installers that work in schools during term time are DBS cleared.
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