About the Project

Heart of the City Phase 2, Pound’s Park, Sheffield

Construction of a mini park, completed in 59 weeks. 

Rob Bell’s scheme packed a great deal into a small space. This high-quality urban mini park included extensive planting beds with integrated sustainable urban drainage, along with a play area housing two 9m-high timber pyramids linked by a rope bridge and corkscrew tube, water jets powered by a seesaw, and a sandpit with an Archimedes screw. It demanded technical problem-solving, astute value engineering and collaborative passion. 

Personally requested by the client following his leadership of a successful similar scheme, Rob drove the crucial value engineering. He rationalised the drainage scheme while retaining its capabilities and appearance, planed off the existing car park surface for re-use, and negotiated favourable rates on large quantities of decorative sandstone mulch. 

His innovation initiatives included a sprayed-concrete climbing boulder in the play area that also acts as a retaining structure to overcome the level differences in the park. 

And when, during the part-demolition of a two-storey plant room housing a live substation, a section of the basement was found to be only partially backfilled, Rob came up with the technical solution. He re-excavated the basement, replaced the hardcore fill with foamed concrete to ensure the floor slab was ground-bearing, before proceeding with the demolition and new brickwork envelope to allow the construction of a new plant room and toilet block.