Project overview

Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC) is a flagship development that brings the University of Bristol to the commercial centre of the city, to the east of Brunel’s iconic Temple Meads station, to anchor it in the economic renaissance and renewal of Bristol and the wider city-region. TQEC will provide the space to reimagine the University’s role as one of the world’s great civic universities, empowering and enabling a transformed relationship with the city region, its businesses, communities, and government.

The TQA1 (Temple Quarter Academic 1) Building will support the economic growth of Bristol and the wider West of England by:

Strengthening the role of Bristol City Centre as an economic powerhouse, bringing together high densities of knowledge-intensive firms, innovators and entrepreneurs, investors, and anchor institutions for innovation, including the University of Bristol, and Government;
Acting as a catalyst and hub for the creation of an innovation district in the Temple Quarter area, which could significantly enhance the economic growth and competitiveness of the city as a whole;
Solving societal challenges as part of a mission-orientated approach, providing a clear focus for innovation and business growth interventions, and creating social and environmental (as well as economic) value; Accelerating productivity growth in Bristol; and,
Supporting inclusive growth, enabling people to access opportunities that will be created in the Temple Quarter.
The first phase of the TQEC includes development of a new 6 storey 38,350m2 academic building (TQA1).
Public Realm / Highway Works
Permanent landscaping works

See rendered images of scheme design for the TQA1 building;

Schedule of Work – April to June 2025

Completion of roofing
Dismantle of final tower crane
Continuation of internal partition walls
Continuation of mechanical and electrical fit-out
External landscaping commencement

Construction update as of April 2025

Construction at TQA1 remains on programme, with a workforce now increasing to over 500 personnel on site per day, and with over 800,000 person-hours having been worked on site since commencement.

March has seen the rooflight installations complete, providing the final element of watertightness to the internal building. Roof insulation and paving finishes have been completed to over 50% of the roof area, which has allowed delivery of roof level plant equipment, including 5no. 10-tonne chiller units, plant room modules, and air handling units. This has permitted the first of our 3no. tower cranes to have been dismantled, with the second due to be dismantled by the end of March, and the final crane to be dismantled in May.

External landscaping works have now commenced, with installation of below ground services and ground level formations being undertaken ahead of paving, street furniture and soft landscaping later in the year.

Internally, partition wall construction is progressing to all levels, along with plastering and decorating. This month has also seen the commencement of glazed partitioning, joinery, and raised access floor installation. Mechanical and electrical installations continue to make good progress, with wiring now underway on 1st and 2nd floor levels.

Additional Information

A number of roadwork activities are currently being undertaken near our site entrance on Cattle Market Road and Feeder Road by utilities providers, but which are not part of the TQA1 project, including gas pipe upgrades, district heating pipework, power cabling, and water mains. Please contact Bristol City Council for any queries, or see Causeway one.network for current roadworks activity. Please not that cycling and pedestrian access around our site entrance will likely be disrupted whilst these works are ongoing.

Social Value

The project’s Social Return on Investment (SROI) is attributed to local employment, charity work, education talks and work experience programmes. Since commencement of this project, the following have been delivered to contribute to the project SROI:

Educational visits and open door events
Charitable giving
Local job creation
Mentoring
Work placements

We endeavour to implement social value on all our projects and leave a positive lasting legacy. For this project we have some ambitious projects and have already funded £24,910 to 11 local charities based in Bristol including:

One 25 - Night Outreach Van
Bristol Mind
1625 Independent People
Let’s Talk about Loss
Dame Emily Park project
Helping Homeless Believe

This year has seen us giving out Soup to the workforce to as it was such a cold start to the year! but as our winter initiatives go into the Spring, Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Coats, Hats & Scarf's that were hung out on onto our hoardings for the Homeless Charities we are linked to in the City. Leave one take one warm clothing point

IKB Academy visits the University of Bristol's Temple Quarter Campus to discuss Careers in Construction with the wider team.

Women in Construction & International Women's day:

To celebrate Women in Construction Week and International Women's day, we partnered with Lisa Saunders from The Retrofit West Business Support initiative, bringing together the most inspiring women who work across the industry and our TQEC site, here in Bristol.

An incredible afternoon hearing everyone's individual career journey into the built environment and how we all have a huge passion for the industry and the roles we are in. It was so great to have a shared passion recognised in one space! Our focus was on discussing the green skills that we have within our roles and across the sites we work on.

We look forward to a follow up meeting, to discuss how we can support each other in the future in Construction.

Open Doors 2025!

This year we took part in Open doors welcoming the public onto the site for a walk round the site and questions for our Engineer Harry & Health & Safety Graduate Giorgia. Two female Project Manager Apprentices from Mace stated "We are excited to view the site for the sheer scale of the Project, and to understand the sequence of the works, such an impressive building".

Thank you and please get in touch if you would like to take part in Open Doors 2026.

Two female Project Manager and Apprentices from Mace

TQA1 Wider team supported 1625ip Homeless Charity 'Sleep out event' in Bristol raising £1,317.00 for the charity to support their clients.

We are extending our support for homelessness with site initiatives for clothing alongside financial support given to promote opportunities and provide essentials.

We have joined with our client the University of Bristol launching the DEC (Design Engineer Construct) programme in IKB Academy, a local Bristol secondary school, promoting STEM activities in the Built environment.

The accredited learning programme aims to promote and inspire the next generation of professionals into the construction industry by giving them the qualifications they need to succeed. The programme provides students from 13-18+ with the opportunity to increase their knowledge of professional practice in the digital built environment through a programme of study in years 10 and 11, culminating in a DEC GCSE. Beyond this, A or T level options are available to support access into the industry or higher education.

The first session with pupils was on Monday 30th September with the Year 10 and 12 students working on a whole day exercise that saw the evolution of a design for an ‘Eco Classroom’. Members of our team worked with the school staff to deliver the session as did members of the project’s consultant team, Landscape Architect – Grant Associates, and Architect - Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

The day finished following presentations which were judged by our staff panel and saw a winner and runners up take away prizes to celebrate their efforts.

The Winning Team with Matt Privett, Geospatial Engineer, left, Peter Headeach, IKB Academy Headteacher.

four IKB Academy students doing STEM activities

Our site is also being used as a learning resource with multiple visits by different engineering groups to support their academic syllabus.

Our social value employment and skills metrics are being tracked as the project progresses and we are now in a position to share the performance against our targets for the project as of the end of January 2024. Further updates will build upon these figures as we look forward towards new trades starting.

Item	KPI		Unit	Achieved	Achieved %
1	Work placements	50	People	25	50%
2	Jobs created	35	People	32	91%
3	Construction Careers information, Advice and Guidance events	27	Events	23	85%
4	Waged training Weeks	2995	Weeks	1207	40%
5	Qualifying the workforce	80	People	71	89%
6	Training plans	9	Number	4	44%
7	Case studies	4	Number	4	100%

Our site was independently assessed by the nationally recognised Considerate Contractors Scheme on January 13th 2025, and was awarded a maximum score of 45 out of 45. This has been made possible by pooling best practice examples from both our business and the wider industry for which we are extremely thankful. Extract of report below.

SCORING
Respect Community	Excellent - 15/15
Care for the Environment	Excellent - 15/15
Value their Workforce	Excellent - 15/15	For more information on the Monitor Checklist, scoring descriptors, the Scheme's definition of innovation and report writing standards, visit www.ccscheme.org.uk
Total Report Score	Excellent - 45/45

Pedestrians and Cyclists

Safe access and egress of our site vehicles over the public use of the footpath and cycleways is of paramount importance to us. As such we have worked closely with Bristol City Council over the past 12 months to develop proposals to address the changing needs of the site. In the summer last year we have constructed a new layby and site entrance.

Following initial and footpath and cycleway traffic calming measures, we have extended tarmac roads into the site to aid effective cleaning of transport, and enhanced our site standards by training our full time gate persons to CLOCS Standards.

Our traffic calming measures have been agreed with Bristol City Council, and will be supported using our gate personnel to control our construction traffic. Our aim is united with the council, and our client the University of Bristol, to install effective measures to control the risk to public from the site’s traffic movements.

We have illustrated the approved layout of these measures below;

click to enlarge

Sustainability Performance

We aim to ensure our construction activities do not harm the local environment. To drive sustainability on the project we set deliverables around key focus areas. These include both Resource Efficiency and Social Value.

We utilise ‘take back schemes’ where suppliers collect packaging waste from site, such as wooden pallets. These schemes allow the reuse of materials and reduce our impact on natural resources.

Current performance to date includes:

Social Return on Investment - £1,622,143.35

Local Employment (South West) - 52%

% Key Building Materials Responsibly Sourced - 99%

Construction Waste Diverted from Landfill - 97%

Toureen welcomed work placement students from Winterbourne Academy to TQA1 Bristol site.

The 11 GCSE students spent the entire week with us onsite, experiencing the wide range of roles the construction industry offers, whilst gaining real world experience directly onsite. Each day they met and heard from one of our in-house experts from a number of fields, including project management, health and safety, engineering, commercial, and sustainability, followed by onsite demonstrations, from cube crushing, crane operations, steel fixings, bricklaying and concrete operations.

Following this, and taking what they had learnt throughout the week, the students were challenged to build a bridge that would hold the most concrete blocks, a challenge they all rose to, impressing everyone on site.

It was a rewarding week to watch a new generation be inspired, ask questions, and take what they had learnt and put it in to practice, we hope to see them on site soon! A huge thank you to the entire project team from Toureen and to Winterbourne Academy.

N G Bailey visits local school for Careers in Construction.

Last week the Bristol TQEC (Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus) team delivered the Giant Tetrahedron STEM Challenge workshop to 90 year 7 students at Oasis Temple Quarter Academy over two days.

The day consisted of introducing who NG Bailey are, the different job roles within the engineering industry and how STEM subjects are related to various job roles. Tim Smith Project Director spoke about TQEC project and what the team are currently working on for the university of Bristol with our principal contractor Sir Robert McAlpine.

TQEC is one of the UK’s largest regeneration projects. The campus will be home to 3,000 students and 800 university staff, which will also be a hub for local communities. It is important for us to build relationships with local schools so that they can be part of the build process, and some will eventually move into the campus.

The students were very enthusiastic about building the tetrahedron and showed good teamwork and listening skills. Particular feedback from the students were “ I really liked the giant pyramid that we made, it was the best experience of my life” “It was really fun”.

A big thank you to Richard James head of Oasis Temple Quarter for hosting us, and Sir Robert McAlpine for supporting the team with the workshop.

Community events on site

Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus celebrates topping out

The Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC), part of Bristol’s most ambitious regeneration project, celebrated a major milestone on Thursday, 12 September 2024, with a tr

Dr Bike Road Safety Event

We organised a fantastic 'Dr. Bike road safety event' for our local cycling community, in collaboration with Bristol Council and Better by Bike.

View event page

Bake sale for Maggie's

We are proud to have built several of its important centres across the UK. Our site recently held a bake sale on 20th May and raised £77.80 + gift aid for the charity.

Our partnership with Maggie's