This large energy from Waste facility was won as a design / commercial bid in conjunction with Urbaser Balfour Beatty through a formal and lengthy competitive design development process.

The site, located at the western edge of the Cotswold Escarpment, understandably attracted immense local interest. The planning process was therefore scrutinised meticulously with the design / client team having to demonstrate at all stages the virtues of the development along with the technical aspects of the waste management process.

The final site area is actually the former Gloucester Aviation factory and airfield site.

The linear design plays to the internal organisation of the various stages of the waste management process, but is focussed on generating a number of by products from the waste management process; electricity generation put back to the national grid, recycled material separation, residual ash used in the road building and blockwork manufacturing industries.

Even though the building fabric is vast, the amount of space required for the complex process engineering equipment necessitates that the plant is constructed at the same time as the building fabric rather than as a later install process.

But even at the size it is, with careful selection of the external fabric colours and fragmentation of the building volumes, it is hard even for the trained and familiar eye to locate the development from the Escarpment at first glance.