Norwich Research Park
In March 2011 the UK government announced the award of £26 million to fund the further development of Norwich Research Park. Already home to world leading research institutes, the park is being jointly developed with the University of East Anglia, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the John Innes Foundation, The Institute for Food Research, the Genome Analysis Centre and the Sainsbury Laboratory. Our client group needed to develop a business plan for investing the money in infrastructure, amenities and facilities to deliver innovation from bioscience. They wanted to ensure that the money delivered maximum impact on the economy and continued to help it retain the best researchers and attract further innovative businesses to the location.
We worked with the delivery team at Norwich Research Park to develop a list of priorities for investment, working alongside stakeholders, architects and masterplanners. We worked to identify where investment was most required, how development might best be taken forward and the facilities we considered to be most lacking at NRP – using our knowledge of provision at other parks and, importantly, our understanding of what private sector occupiers would wish to see.
The Norwich Research Park team produced a business plan for investment within a tight timescale enabling the allocated public sector funding to be drawn down. Work continues in developing detailed plans for the next stage of investment at the park, in which we are also involved.