Fit-out & refurb £3m-£15m

Gold

Name
Bob Hill
Company
ISG InteriorExterior
Project
Refurb of 76,000ft² block with addition of new floor. 39-49 Wigmore Street, London
Contract
£14.9m, JCT 98, 72 weeks

The pace and development of refurbishing this whole block of Wigmore Street was demanding and complex. Not only did Bob Hill decide to demolish and rebuild the cores to improve circulation and create more usable floor space by reducing the existing lightwell, he even added a new floor while he was at it.

Hill was the leading force in inviting input to the design from subcontractors, which secured programme certainty as well as giving a practical design that fell within the cost plan. Believing that if his team fails, then he fails, Hill also insisted on a no-blame culture within the integrated team right from the start, constantly encouraging constructive debate to overcome the many challenges on the project.

The biggest challenge of all, of course, was finding a structural solution to the problem of transferring the load of 14,000ft2 of extra floor space (created by reducing the size of the existing lightwell) down the building without affecting the Steinway Pianos store on the ground floor. Hill eventually decided to put three new pile caps within a public corridor in the basement and erect steel columns in the shared areas of the ground floor.

Controlling the project’s environmental impact on neighbours proved a big brief. Hill held meetings with tenants and adjoining owners to ensure they could carry on their business with the least amount of disruption during the works. He also struck an informal agreement with Steinway to suspend noisy works when it was hosting recording sessions or when major artistes were selecting concert pianos.

The client is delighted with the transformation and the finish quality of the works. Hill too is extremely proud of completing a most difficult project on time and to the highest of standards.

Silver

Name
Paul Thomas
Company
Bovis Lend Lease
Project
22,000ft² retail extension and fit-out. Marks & Spencer, Cardiff
Contract
£14.5m, bespoke D&C, 38 weeks

The Christmas before this job started, the car park at the Marks & Spencer’s at Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff became so comprehensively gridlocked that the store’s customers couldn’t get out for three hours – a retail disaster in the till-ringing festive season. In this scenario, extending the store would only make matters worse by bringing even more cars into the area, but that was precisely the project Paul Thomas had to pull off — while simultaneously preventing any traffic snarl-ups.

It took a display of masterly diplomacy from Thomas to convince some heavyweight stakeholders – the neighbouring Tesco and a large hotel complex, as well as the Highways Agency (Culverhouse Cross runs off the main road to Swansea) – that the scheme would ultimately benefit them too.

Managing the traffic was the key, so Thomas first built bigger roads to take the extra traffic for construction deliveries as well as more customers when the store extension was complete, before building a new multi-storey car park and finally the extension itself.

In an intense six months before work started on site, Thomas chaired weekly meetings to develop the design programme, key dates and deliverables so that work packages could be tendered. During this time, he proactively researched and put the case for alternative methods of developing the scheme, such as precast concrete cladding for the car park, roof sheeting and external cavity wall internal leaf construction.

Trust, honesty and mutual respect were his keywords in relationships with the client and the professional team. Thomas was exceptionally good at painting a picture of how works would affect operations, using charts and photographs to illustrate well-developed sequencing plans. Accurate scoping of works packages kept variations to an absolute minimum and the project within the cost price.

Commended

Paul Bacon Laing O’Rourke, Mark Carter Spectrum Projects, Wayne Flannery Woolf, Mark Johnson Bovis Lend Lease, Peter Stephenson Laing O’Rourke, James Walker Styles & Wood