Building work for further expansion of the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences (CBS) will begin on Monday 15 January 2018 on University Park.

The expansion will provide a physical link between the existing CBS building and the Boots Science Building and will include laboratories, offices and meeting rooms for academic and postgraduate staff.

When complete, it will house a number of formerly geographically-dispersed but complementary research groups and multidisciplinary teams. These research groups include Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Cancer Science, Chemical Biology and Mass Spectrometry, Respiratory Genetics and Pharmacology.

The expansion will also unlock space and facilities in the existing CBS building for the Green Chemicals Beacon, and will form a key part of both Global Strategy 2020 and the University of Nottingham’s Research Strategy.

CBS expansion — a timeline

A Project Management Group, chaired by Professor Dame Jessica Corner, was established in September 2016 to oversee the design and development of the building expansion following Executive Board project endorsement. The group has focused on optimising the building’s design to meet the requirements of the proposed research groups and incorporate best practice in providing an environment that would encourage multidisciplinary and group networking behaviours — providing further opportunities in line with Strategy 2020 and enabling the co-location of all the groups needed to strategically leverage the maximum advantage from the building.

Funding approval for the project to proceed was confirmed earlier this month.

The new building will comprise of an area of 6,000 m² spread over five floors and will be located adjacent to the Boots Science Building on University Park.

Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange, explains:

“The expansion to the CBS building presents the University with an exciting opportunity to drive forward a digitally-enabled research agenda, develop and attract world class researchers and ensure that our researchers have access to leading technologies and environments that enable new ways of working and collaboration and provide the services and systems to easily collect, manipulate, analyse, store and share research data.

“This facility will allow much more effective leverage of funding from research councils, charities and industry, and will be crucial to the delivery of innovative courses in Cancer Studies that will put Nottingham at the forefront of modern UK education in this area.”

Effect on parking

The development of the CBS expansion will result in some changes to car parking facilities: Around 60 parking spaces will be removed from the area next to the Boots Science Building when work commences in January 2018.

We appreciate the inconvenience of this and have recently carried out a review of the parking facilities on University Park to improve the provision of parking spaces available.

Measures include:

• Adjustments to parking layouts in the Engineering and Science area to provide 32 additional staff parking spaces, anticipated by January 2018
• The recent re-instatement of 35 staff parking spaces adjacent to the Chemistry building
• Re-instatement of 20 staff parking spaces at the front of Hallward Library, anticipated by January 2018

Other areas available for staff parking on University Park are:

• Main visitors car park which has 230 staff spaces
• Lenton Hall Drive between Library Road and Derby Road with 107 staff spaces
• Lincoln Hall car park off Cripps Hill with 58 staff spaces

Building work on the CBS expansion will commence in January 2018, with an anticipated completion date of the end of 2019. Throughout this period, construction related vehicles will be restricted to using the South entrance and Science Road only.

We will be releasing further details of the development over the coming months.

For all the latest news on current developments around our campuses, visit the Current Developments website.