
Meet the Finalists
2022 | Residential & Accommodation

Ashton Rise, Bristol: construction of 133 homes, completed in 121 weeks.Â
Client: Bristol City CouncilÂ
Contract: NEC, option AÂ
Value: £24mÂ

About the Project
Ashton Rise, Bristol
With so much external brickwork across the five blocks of flats and 50 houses of this scheme, Martin Bennett made a crucial decision. He ditched a traditional-style build in favour of modern methods of construction. Â
By introducing precast aircrete walls and an insulated steel-framed system, he achieved project certainty at a time when bricklayers were in short supply, and took the brickwork off the critical path. Each unit was built and made watertight more quickly than a traditional build, giving the internal trades more time to devote to quality.Â
Martin’s embrace of the future did not end with the masonry. He trialled a road surfacing system that replaces part of the carbon-intensive bitumen in asphalt with plastic waste. Because the plastic gives the asphalt more flexibility, cracks and potholes are less likely to form.Â
A decision was made in preconstruction for sustainable heating rather than gas boilers. So Martin put in a district heating network of 133 ground-source heat pumps fed by pipes in 33 boreholes up to 185m deep. Â
Although the floor plans were already fixed by this point and space was limited, Martin dodged the substantial costs of altering the floor layouts of the 133 units. He had a steel frame designed that incorporated both heat pump and water cylinder in each unit’s airing cupboard. So successful was his initiative that it has since been copied by other projects.Â

