Plans lodged for new university engineering facility

Plans have been lodged for a new engineering facility, featuring a range of laboratory and workshop space, at the University of Sheffield’s city centre campus.The Royce Discovery Centre will provide a state-of-the-art facility for the university’s Faculty of Engineering and support its continued growth.The centre will focus on early-stage research on materials discovery and processing. It will work alongside the Royce Translational Centre (RTC) situated at the Advanced manufacturing Research Campus.It will be occupied by The Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, which facilitates the collaboration of academics from across the UK with the private sector to order to commercialise research.As part of the redevelopment of the site, located between Portobello Street and Orange Street, the existing Portobello Wing of the Portobello Centre and the car parks either side will be demolished. The new building will feature a lobby, showcase/exhibition area, workshops and meeting rooms on the ground floor and mezzanine levels. Six vibration sensitive laboratories, a laser room, students’ office and academics’ office will be provided on the first floor.At full capacity the building will accommodate 181 people, including students, researchers, post graduate members of the Faculty of Engineering and visitors.The university submitted a detailed planning application in December 2017 and this was validated by Sheffield City Council last week (10 January 2018). A determination date of 11 April has been set.