Education Minister Paul Givan has opened the new campus of New-Bridge Integrated College in Loughbrickland, Co Down, Northern Ireland, a project that matters to building and architecture professionals because it shows a decade-long Fresh Start schools scheme reaching completion after funding was secured in 2016. Consideration was disclosed by the Department of Education as a £27 million investment for a school of about 620 pupils.

New-Bridge Integrated College is an integrated secondary school whose new building includes state-of-the-art sports facilities and new learning space, replacing accommodation that grew piecemeal after 1995.

Hilary Harbinson, principal of New-Bridge Integrated College, said: “We opened our gates in 1995 with four mobiles and over time because the demand for integrated educations was growing our old school grew to over a mile of semi-permanent accommodation which wasn’t deserving of our pupils.”

Bailey Mulligan, head girl at the school, said: “We’ve been told about this for years and years, I didn’t think I was going to be here to see it happen.”

Givan said that while not every school will be an official integrated school in Northern Ireland, every school can foster respect, diversity and identity.

Ganson, a Dublin-headquartered building and civil engineering contractor with an office in Castlewellan, was appointed contractor in 2021, according to NICIE.

AECOM acted as architect on the scheme, according to the school’s website.

The structural driver is the Fresh Start Agreement, which, as reported by UTV, funded the £27 million scheme and was first announced as a funded project in March 2016.

For the sector, the timing matters because the budget rose from £17.4 million at planning stage to £20.5 million at contractor appointment and then £27 million at construction start, showing how long public school programmes can accumulate cost between approval and delivery.

Construction began in January 2023 with completion targeted for summer 2025, while the minister’s official opening followed in October 2026.

The broader implication for the sector is that long-running capital programmes for integrated schools give architects and contractors a steady public pipeline, though one exposed to planning delays and inflation over many years.

Source: Belfast Telegraph / UTV / NICIE / Armagh I