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PKL’s temporary kitchen
maintains standards for Trinity College
PKL has supplied an extensive, high specification temporary kitchen facility to
Trinity College, Cambridge to ensure the College’s high catering standards for
students, Fellows, and staff were maintained during a major refurbishment of its
kitchens.
Trinity College is renowned for the quality of its food and its kitchens cater
for three to four sittings a day with up to 300 eating per sitting, ranging from
routine meals for around 900 students in residence to feasts and other formal
functions. The Fellows were keen that both the quality of the food and the
breadth of the menus for all meals should be maintained during the 12 month
refurbishment.
“It was essential that the temporary kitchen was equipped to the same high
standards as the permanent kitchens so that all those taking meals would not
notice any difference,” recalled Dan Thomas of Bidwells, which managed the
project. “We considered a number of options, including making use of facilities
in nearby colleges, but the extended period of refurbishment meant this was not
feasible. Our design team included specialists from GWP Foodservice Design
Solutions and they were able to recommend PKL as being the best choice to
provide a temporary kitchen,” he added.
The kitchen was customised to meet the College’s requirements and prefabricated
at PKL’s purpose designed facility in Cheltenham. It was then and delivered to
site as 29 separate cabins. A crane was used to lift these into place and
partitions were removed to create an open plan space. As the entrance to the
College dining room is 1.3m above ground level, the temporary kitchen is also
raised to the same height and connected to the main building by a specially
constructed flying walkway. The exterior of the kitchen has been finished in a
colour selected by the College to blend in as far as possible with the
surrounding buildings, which are Grade 1 listed..
Dan Thomas continued: “The project presented many logistical challenges,
including negotiating Cambridge’s narrow central streets with large
prefabricated buildings, but everything went very smoothly and we were very
impressed with PKL’s support throughout the project. They were also very
responsive in helping to fine tune the kitchen design once it was up and
running, and have taken responsibility and financial risk for the equipment
through the duration of the project.”
As well as managing the project, Bidwells is also providing architectural and
structural engineering services as part of the refurbishment.