For Oxford's colleges, universities and schools: new halls built and student rooms refurbished, timed to the academic year.
Student accommodation
The Lynch Brother Group is a student accommodation contractor for Oxford and Oxfordshire. We build new halls, studios and boarding accommodation as main contractor, and we refurbish student rooms, staircases and shared spaces under fit out and refurbishment in the vacations. We work for the Oxford colleges, the universities, independent schools and the developers and operators of purpose-built student accommodation. Tell us when the block empties and when the intake arrives; the programme sits between the two.
New halls, studios and cluster flats (a group of bedrooms sharing one kitchen) on college and university sites, and boarding accommodation on school sites, built under new build construction. Groundworks, structure, screed and decoration are the trades the group keeps in-house. The bathroom pods are craned in floor by floor as the frame rises, and the fitted bedroom furniture follows, both from their specialist suppliers on our programme.
Bedrooms, en suites, corridors and kitchens on a staircase or in a block, renewed under fit out and refurbishment in the long vacation. Every room gets new floors, walls, ceilings, lighting, power and data. We decorate and hand back staircase by staircase, or floor by floor in a hall, before the intake arrives.
The wet rooms wear out first, and many Oxford staircases still share bathrooms. We strip a wet room to the structure and renew the drainage and the ventilation. Then either a factory-finished bathroom pod is wheeled in and connected, or our own screed team screeds the floor to falls (sloped to the drain) and our own tilers finish it before the sanitaryware goes in. Where a staircase converts to en suites, we survey the drainage route through the old floors before we price.
Fire doors replaced by a certificated installer on our programme, compartment walls and floors sealed (fire-stopping, so fire cannot pass between rooms), and the alarm and emergency lighting upgraded, under fit out and refurbishment. The scope comes from your fire risk assessment or the fire engineer's strategy. In a vacation we take a staircase at a time; in term time a room at a time, with the student decanted (moved to another room) for the day.
The shared rooms a block cannot open without: common rooms, kitchens, laundries, study rooms, bike stores and porters' lodges, a student accommodation fit out in its own right, under fit out and refurbishment on the same programme as the bedrooms.
Roofs, windows and external walls on the blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s, renewed as retrofit and decarbonisation. External wall insulation and render in a non-combustible system where the block's height requires one, roof insulation and new glazing go on first; the heating and ventilation are then sized to the tighter fabric. The block costs less to heat for the next intake.
Our own decorators repaint a staircase or a whole block in the vacation, and planned maintenance books the repairs a block needs into the weeks the rooms stand empty.
In Oxford the students leave in late June and the new intake arrives at the start of October. The conference season sits between the two, so the block reaches us when the college hands it over, not when term ends. Christmas and Easter take the shorter jobs. Anything that closes a staircase goes into a vacation; the rooms come back cleaned and tested before the first arrival.
Graduate blocks stay occupied all year and conference guests fill the summer, so not every block empties. Where rooms are in use, the works run behind hoardings (temporary site walls) with their own entrance, the noisy work keeps to the college's hours, and nothing noisy runs in the summer exam weeks. Every occupied staircase keeps its alarm and its escape routes live; every shutdown is booked with the lodge.
A 1960s block or a new hall is one room repeated, a hundred bedspaces over. We run each trade room to room in one fixed order, so no floor waits for a trade that is finishing the last. An old staircase is the opposite: every room differs, and the survey prices each.
Every job here is priced against a date that cannot move: the day the new intake arrives. A domestic bursar has a staircase or an annexe (a college block away from the main site) to renew in the long vacation. A university or an operator has a block to build beside blocks that stay occupied. A school has a boarding house to bring up to standard over several summers.
One site team runs each job to one programme, and the structure, the screed and the decoration stay in-house. The bathroom pods, the fitted furniture and the fire doors come from their specialist suppliers, each booked into the programme for its floor. Before the keys go back, every room is tested and the alarm, emergency lighting and fire door certificates are handed over.
In Oxford the colleges' estates teams and bursars set the rules: the permits, the hours, the conference bookings that shorten the summer, and listed building consent for the many staircases that are listed, which runs as our heritage and listed building page describes. The university and the schools have estates teams of their own.
Once the intake is in, the block stays in hand: planned maintenance takes the repairs in the vacations, and the decorating cycle keeps the rooms ready for the next intake. New halls and boarding accommodation are on the new build construction page, and the colleges' teaching and dining buildings on the education page.
Science & Laboratories
Lab fit out and refurbishment
Workspace & Offices
Cat A, Cat B and full building refurbishment
Retail
Shopfitting and fit outs that open on time
Hospitality
Refurbishments designed around trading hours
Education
Schools and colleges; summer works a speciality
Student Accommodation
Build and refurb, timed to the academic year
Residential Development
Multi-plot schemes, groundworks to handover
Heritage & Listed
Conservation-grade work on period buildings
How a student accommodation refurbishment runs
Every block is priced from its own survey. Ask us for yours.
Main Contracting
Main contractor and design and build partner
New Build Construction
Offices, labs, education and residential development
Fit Out & Refurbishment
Cat A, Cat B and full refurbishment
Dilapidations
Strip out, repairs and making good, for tenants and landlords
Retrofit & Decarbonisation
External wall insulation, render systems and energy upgrades
Screed, Render & Insulation
Liquid screed, spray rendering and external wall insulation
Decorating & Finishes
High-end decorating and tiling — the final finish
Property Management & Maintenance
Planned maintenance for landlords and businesses
From the site office
Yes, and the long vacation is when most of it is done. Between the college handing over the block and the first arrival, a staircase or a block takes new wet rooms, new services, new finishes and a full redecoration, provided the survey and the drawings are finished in the spring and the pods, doors and furniture are ordered by Easter. Larger blocks are split across two or three summers, or the Christmas and Easter vacations take the smaller phases.
Yes, where the college allows it. Term-time work runs by decant: the college moves the students on a staircase to other rooms for the weeks their rooms are in hand. Fire doors are swapped a room at a time with the student out for the day. Our hours are the college's, normally weekday daytime, with nothing noisy in the exam weeks. The strip out and the wet-room work still wait for a vacation.
Yes. New halls, studios and cluster flats for colleges, universities and the developers and operators of purpose-built student accommodation, and boarding accommodation for schools, are built as new build construction. The site is fenced with its own access. Where a new block stands beside occupied blocks, the groundworks are timed to the long vacation. Our own structure, screed and decorating teams work on the new block as they do on a refurbished staircase.
It depends on the survey and the budget. A light refurbishment renews the decoration and the floors, with new furniture from the college's supplier. A full refurbishment strips each room to the structure: en suites where bathrooms were shared, new kitchens, new power, data and lighting, new fire doors and fire-stopping, and new finishes, with the common rooms and laundries done alongside. The fabric (the roof, the windows and the insulation) is added where the block needs it.
We price per bedspace from the drawings and a survey, then total it by staircase, block or hall, so you see what each costs before you commit a summer to it. The wet rooms, the services, the fire safety works and the finishes set the rate; the number of bedspaces sets the total. Our cost guide covers the fit-out rates the room price is built from.
Purpose-built student accommodation, PBSA, is a block built for students and run by a university, a college or a private operator, with its own management, kitchens and common rooms. We build it as new build construction and refurbish it under fit out and refurbishment, for the operator or the developer, under a commercial contract. It is priced per bedspace, programmed round the intake dates and handed back floor by floor, as a college block is.
Something else on your mind? Ask us directly.
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