We are pleased to announce that we recently carried out an estimate of the anticipated whole life costs for the new Discovery Building at the Rothera Research Station, Antarctica.
The purpose of the operating expense (opex) estimate is to:
- Assist the Natural Environment Research Council in establishing a short-term (three-year) opex budget for the operation of the Discovery Building and site-wide services.
- Assist British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in forward planning for the asset management of the facility.
- To understand the impact of the Discovery Building on opex against historic costs.
The building is planned for completion in March 2025, with commissioning and handover to take place by the end of the 2024-25 Austral Summer season. Decommissioning of the buildings being replaced is scheduled for the 2025/2026 season (March 2026).
The Discovery Building incorporates site-wide services and replaces six end-of-life buildings from the 1970s and 1980s. The new science and operations building will facilitate a change of working for the BAS in how it receives shipped deliveries via the RRS Sir David Attenborough. This moves to a palletised system for stock storage and a digitised method of stock control. The Discovery Building is approximately 90m x 30m, with two storeys and solar panels (PV) on the north face of the building. The building will have boilers, localised heat recovery ventilation, a heat recovery power generation system using heat from the exhaust and hot water jackets. Site-wide services extend across the station, supplying power, fuel, freshwater, data cabling and drainage to and from other legacy buildings. Services also include pumping sea water into the building, where a reverse osmosis plant generates potable (drinking) water.
Photography ©: BAM
