Isis has won the contract to provide furniture for Essex County Council’s BSF programme. Part of the winning Skanska RM consortium, Isis will provide furniture to support and inspire learning at 16 schools across the county. Phase one of the programme is worth £150m alone with the first four schools, two of which are for students with special educational needs, scheduled to open in 2012.
As part of the bidding process, Essex secondary school pupils were asked what they would change about their schools. One team said they wanted flexible classrooms in which they could collaborate, study individually or sit in traditional rows, depending on what the lesson required; they also wanted comfortable chairs. Flexibility and comfort are inherent features of Isis’s designs, so it looks like the pupils will get at least some of what they desire – the fifty inch plasma television is another matter!
Isis MD, Nick Topliss said, “It’s fantastic news, particularly because we will be working with RM. Close collaboration between suppliers is the only way to achieve true integration of ICT into learning environments, which means having the right furniture, power and data delivery to support it.”
Meanwhile, a few miles further south, St George’s Secondary School in Broadstairs, Kent, which was the first BSF bid that Isis won, is nearing completion and due to open in March.