Greenwich Millennium Village Parcel 3 - BRE Group
Greenwich Millennium Village project gets CEEQUAL rating of Very Good
Overview
Greenwich Millennium Village (GMV) is a mixed use, predominantly residential development, comprising of approximately 1,750 residential units.
The project encapsulates the Government’s commitment to sustainable development and the creation of sustainable communities.
All parties were keen to implement CEEQUAL(now known as BREEAM Infrastructure) standards and were successful in achieving a final verification rating of ‘Very Good’.
About
Greenwich Millennium Village Ltd is a joint venture between Countryside and Taylor Wimpey. They are responsible for developing a range of high quality and innovative homes that facilitate a more sustainable lifestyle.
Challenges
The project raised challenges in relation to transport and the water environment.
Water environment
The development contained both hard and soft landscaping elements that allowed the project site to attenuate a greater volume of water post-development compared to the pre-developed brownfield site.
Also, the lake in the Ecology Park currently suffers from periods of water shortage, which is damaging for the ecological and aquatic environment.
Transport
As the development was constructed in phases, considerable thought has been given to the management of construction traffic to reduce congestion and disruption to the existing traffic streams and future residents.
Solutions
Water environment
The development scored particularly well in the water environment section due to the consideration given to water attenuation, purification, and enhancement by the design team.
Hard landscaping elements include permeable paving in the car park areas, as well as 1.2 m diameter subsurface attenuation piping. Soft landscaping elements include brown roofs on all the buildings; planting in between the buildings; and a significantly sized swale which will connect to the existing Ecology Park. The GMV development will direct excess rainfall into the lake from roofs of buildings to keep the water at a sufficient level.
Transport
The entire Greenwich Millennium Village site has been designed with sustainable transport in mind, with the inclusion of significant cycling infrastructure (cycle paths, cycle storage etc.), connection with local transport hubs at North Greenwich & Greenwich town centre, and the inclusion of several electric car charging points. Emphasis was placed on the integration of walking and cycling infrastructure into the design of public realm aspects of the development.
Benefits
CEEQUAL allowed for recognition to be gained for those within the project team going the extra mile to pursue and encourage sustainable development.
CEEQUAL also allowed the sustainable assessment of the civil aspects of the development, as these were not covered by the Code and BREEAM assessments being carried out in conjunction.
Since a separate assessment is being carried out for each sub-phase of the project, the project design team have had the opportunity to review the documents that were carried out at the outline planning stage, and reiterate their conclusions and/or prompt further analysis.