Key Levelling Up Minister visits National Brownfield Institute

The National Brownfield Institute welcomed a high profile visitor to the University of Wolverhampton's Springfield Campus recently.  

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dehenna Davison, visited the new facilities at the former brewery, a brownfield regeneration site.

On her tour, Dehenna was given an overview of the new facilities, including the state-of-the-art Igloo, a 4D immersive suite which is being used in education and research to review and assess land for remediation and regeneration, and she also met Spot, the Boston Dynamics robotic dog.

University of Wolverhampton staff and technicians were also on-hand to talk her through some of the work being carried out in the laboratories.

The NBI is a world-class institute that provides the facility to develop modern methods of building through innovation and partnership with the construction industry, focusing on the practical application of future brownfield regeneration through the work of research teams, leading policy development and commercial services. 

The scheme benefited from £14.9million of funding from the Government’s Getting Building Fund for the West Midlands. City of Wolverhampton Council worked closely with the Black Country LEP and West Midlands Combined Authority to secure the funding. The remainder of the funding came from the city’s bid to the Government’s Towns Fund.

The University of Wolverhampton’s £120 million Springfield campus is Europe’s largest university centre of construction excellence and focuses on innovations linked to sustainable housing and the circular economy.

ISG was awarded the contract to build the National Brownfield Institute (NBI) on the construction super campus, and work got underway in March 2021.

The £17.5million research centre, designed by Birmingham-based Associated Architects, received planning approval in December 2020.

The 12-acre Springfield Campus is already home to the Thomas Telford University Technical College, Elite Centre for Manufacturing Skills and the £45million School of Architecture and Built Environment. 

These facilities, combined with the NBI, will lay the foundation for the delivery of a National Centre for Sustainable Construction and Circular Economy, which will focus on sustainability and the climate change emergency.