South Lakes Leisure Centre

Building Services

Dowds successfully delivered the full Mechanical and Electrical package for the new state of the art South Lake Leisure Centre, Craigavon – one of the largest public sector construction projects within Northern Ireland in recent years.

The new multi-use sports and leisure complex represents a major new flagship health and wellbeing destination featuring a 50m pool, learner pool and leisure pool and the largest gym in Northern Ireland featuring state-of-the art equipment.

It also includes spin and dance studios, an extensive health and wellbeing suite, activity rooms, squash courts and a large sports hall suitable for a variety of sporting activities, as well as expansive outdoor water sports provision.

We delivered the entire electrical package from design through to completion and our proven ability to undertake design and build contracts in the demanding healthcare sector, along with numerous education, industrial and commercial/retail projects, enabled us to provide Armagh City Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council with innovative solutions to the project’s complex electrical engineering challenges.

Our design team worked through design to maintain the BREEAM 2011 Very Good rating. The project was pre-planned using 3D modelling, so we could design and co-ordinate systems before work started. There were very few co-ordination issues on site thanks to the success of the 3D modelling. Our design team worked very closely with 3D modelling development to work towards “Inclusive Sports Facility (ISF) Accreditation Scheme” for the project at grade “excellent”. This allowed us to show that access and movement round the building and use of the systems could be achieved before the installation by use of “walk through” on 3D models.

Facilities Management

Following successful completion of the Building Services contract our Facilities Management division were appointed the FM contract for South Lakes.  Dowds FM provide all statutory and compliance PPM tasks alongside reactive maintenance and small projects.

We have also facilitated the co-ordination between Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and Southern Health and Social Care Trust in safely setting up the new Covid Vaccination centre in the newly opened Leisure Centre.