Student and co-living development
Archaeology for Student and Co-Living Development in Cambridge
Student and co-living schemes in Cambridge are typically dense urban sites with immovable September handover dates.
- Hard constraint
- Academic year handover
- Cost driver
- Deposit depth and complexity
- Method
- Full excavation of footprint, phased with demolition
- Plan for
- Post-excavation running past completion
Why this scheme type carries the requirement it does
Sites are small, deposits can be deep and complex, and the academic year makes the delivery date genuinely fixed. Basement plant, cycle stores and extensive services mean near-total disturbance of the footprint.
The approach that keeps it proportionate
Archaeology should be treated as a pre-construction milestone with its own float, resolved as early in the consent process as possible. On deep urban sites the excavation duration is difficult to compress once fieldwork has started.
Questions
Common questions on this
Can excavation be accelerated by adding staff?
Only to a point. Recording standards and site space limit how many people can work productively, so a deep urban sequence has a practical minimum duration that money cannot remove.
Project review
Archaeology on a student and co-living development scheme?
Send the footprint, the depth of disturbance and the planning position. We will set out the requirement and the programme it implies.