Highlands and Islands Enterprise – Inverness Campus

An entirely new 87-hectare university campus east of Inverness city centre, the Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) Inverness Campus is a landmark development for the Highlands and is amongst the most significant education projects currently under way in the region. Masterplanned by Edinburgh-based 7N Architects, the campus has been developed to provide a range of teaching, research and commercial facilities, most notably for the University of Highlands and Islands (UHI), which was previously scattered over numerous sites across the region. It will also include new facilities for Inverness College UHI, new buildings for Scotland's Rural University College, a Centre for Health Science, a hotel, community sports facilities and office and research facilities for technology-based businesses.

Turnberry has provided wide-ranging strategic development, town planning and economic advice since the project launched, working closely with the client and the consultant team to prepare a masterplan for the campus and select and manage the design team. Turnberry has prepared a development strategy to guide the future direction of campus growth, in terms of core academic and research partners and specific areas of specialism (principally life sciences), and lead and managed an extensive public consultation that supported the planning application for the project. We also conducted extensive UK and international benchmarking and case-study analysis to aid stakeholder briefings, clarification of client objectives and development of project briefs.

The Campus is expected to support UHI’s strategy for growing higher education student numbers. Infrastructure is completed for Phase 1. The Inverness College UHI building opened in September 2015 to provide approximately 18,000 square metres of teaching and workshop space. Turnberry is currently advising on the development of a joint Enterprise and Research Centre shared by researchers from UHI and Highlands and Islands Enterprise which is due for completion in late 2015, the first phase of student residences (expected completion 2016/17) and a small hotel and associated training and social enterprise facility.