Fleet command

It gives arguably the best view of the English Channel. Standing proudly at the southern tip of Whale Island, off the coast of Portsmouth, the building has the prime position in the bay, illuminated against the backdrop of the town on an island dedicated to the Navy. Some may argue, rightly so. For this four-storey building is the new headquarters of the Royal Navy's Commander-in-Chief Fleet. Sitting in his floor-to-ceiling glazed office in the south-facing rotunda, the Navy's Commander-in-Chief will have views far out to sea, across the bay, and over the adjacent naval base – the second largest in the UK.

Built to consolidate the administration of naval components ranging from submarines to the Royal Marines from a number of diverse sites around the UK, the building comprises predominantly open plan offices; a segregated area for the higher ranked officers is on the second floor and a restaurant on the fourth.

Its design and construction under a fast track programme involved the kind of efficiency, co-ordination and planning that the Navy itself would be proud of employing in its own operations. The majority of the team involved were completing the redevelopment of Defence Estates' Andover North site (EMC, June 2002) when tendering began for the headquarters. The office block for Andover was similar in style to the client's plans for the new building at Portsmouth, and although contracts were awarded by competitive tender, the success of Andover proved an influence.

Andre Mooney, project manager for m&e contractor Southern Electric Contracting (SEC) explains: "We were working with Pearce Construction at Andover and they were involved in the tender process for this contract. One of their selling points to the client was the fact that we'd already built a building very similar to the one they wanted down here." The client visited the Andover site and, happy with the results there, aimed to replicate them in Portsmouth.

"Also at that point they seemed to be very happy with the team environment ...and it seemed beneficial to try and involve Pearce in order to try and involve the same sort of supply chain," adds Mooney. The only change to the Andover team was the addition of structural engineer White Young Green. This gave advantages to all concerned and let the "unofficial team" hit the ground running.

"Because we were working in a team environment in an unofficial consortium, we were all involved – Hoare Lea, [SEC], Pearce, White Young Green – pre-tender in designing a scheme in order to bid, and developing that design after it was submitted and agreed," explains Mooney. "We all knew the benefits to the client so we were all working together to try and maintain the team spirit and environment that we had at Andover, to bring that forward, put it into practice and develop the scheme and make improvements."

SEC became involved in December 2002, working under a verbal agreement for several months before a £3.6 million contract was actually signed. This trust in the other team members was a spin-off from Andover. There are no formal frameworks or partnership agrements here. "It's been trust and face value more than anything," confirms Mooney.

SEC worked in tandem with its sister firm Thermal Transfer to carry out the detailed design and install the m&e services for the building. Consultant Hoare Lea was responsible for the concept design.

The team members were in regular contact during the design phase and co-located to site as early as possible: Pearce in April 2003, SEC in July. Having worked together previously made a "massive difference" states SEC's contracts manager Ian Wright. He explains: "People you're working with, you know how they work, not only your own people, but the main contractors. If you came into this [project] cold, time-wise, financially, stress-wise it would have made a huge difference."

The majority of the building design from Andover was replicated and refined as needed. "Why reinvent the wheel when there was something that the client likes, that would be operationally acceptable to them, could be brought forward at a cost probably significantly less than having to totally redesign a new scheme for it that's generally the principle," says Mooney.

Perhaps more significant than the replica design was the time-saving working practices the team brought with it from Andover. These included the use of e-mail for all written communications and an interactive electronic tool and web site for storage of all drawings and project information.

Serving the Navy
The bulk of the mechanical plant for the building is in an internal rooftop plantroom. A small service building sited at the west side of the office block houses the ups, transformer, rainwater harvesting tanks and equipment. This enabled the office space to be maximised and use made of a building needed for bin storage and compactors.

There are six main risers around the building leading from the centralised plantroom. "We've, for construction and design purposes, split the building into six general, modular areas," explains Mooney. Each has its own riser. "Because of the size of the building its more cost-effective to have several risers rather than one main riser then long service routes."

Large-scale prefabrication of pipework and steel frames was carried out for the risers. A workshop used on the Andover project was dismantled and reconstructed here for this purpose.

The majority of the building is serviced by an air displacement system. Low velocity air is blown into the floor voids of the open plan areas, this rises through displacement grilles in the floor by natural convection. All floors except the fourth are open to two, full-height atriums, enabling a central extraction point at high level, close to the plantroom. The cellular offices have individual fan coil units installed.

  The office lighting was complicated and needed careful attention due to the client specification and the need to achieve LG3. Mooney explains:"To get LG3 you've got to have a certain reflectance on the soffit and a certain uniformity of light." The client specified an exposed concrete soffit with a suspended raft-type linear ceiling, making this uniformity of light difficult.

Thorn Lighting was employed during the design stage to develop a solution. It designed a bespoke lighting system that is a linear, wired-through and plug-and-play system for ease of installation and to reduce labour costs. Thorn was chosen for the task as it was the major lighting supplier at Andover and the intention was to adopt as much of the existing supply chain as possible.

Services installation
Installation of the services was programmed to follow the construction team on a floor-by-floor basis. It has been built predominantly from top to bottom, partly to eliminate waste, also to speed the construction process: "they can get the steelwork and the slabs in and you can be working up on the fourth while they are still pouring the slab on the ground," explains Mooney.

The major issue with this project was access. The only connection to the mainland is a small bridge, with a weight restriction of 90 tonnes. The crane needed to lift the plant to the roof weighed 96 tonnes.

  The location of the building, site space and tight plantroom space all conspired to create the need for the large crane size. The west side of the building is only a few metres from the sea, separated from it by a conservation area for migrating birds. "We had to maintain that throughout the job so we couldn't widen the area; so the only place we could lift from was [the east] side of the building," explains Mooney. This created a large lift for plant located at the west side of the building.

"It was marginal as to whether the crane could even get over the bridge onto the island or not," explains Mooney. The team toyed with using Chinook helicopters before structural engineer White Young Green calculated and confirmed the measures that had to be taken for a land transport.

"One of the restrictions of the equipment vehicles coming across the bridge was they were not allowed to go any faster than walking speed," explains Wright. It was arranged for the two cranes, four low-loaders and two lorries carrying plant to arrive at the bridge at 5 am on 29 November 2003. They were then driven over the bridge one by one, with Wright walking in front of each one to ensure the speed restriction was met. To get the 96-tonne crane over the bridge, parts of it had to be stripped off first, bringing its weight down to 86 tonnes and within the bridge's limits.

The team had four days' crane time to position all the rooftop plant so it was essential that the time was used efficiently. "We had a really detailed lifting plan," explains Wright. "We had the plant lined up [alongside the building] in specific positions so that we could load it in the correct order and get it into the building without having to cross over each other."

An added complication was that the roof was completed prior to this process. Wright explains: "The very nature of the job meant they had to put the roof on to get the building watertight as early as possible and the long lead-in time on the plant meant we couldn't have this in first. We had to work out how to bring it in so we didn't damage anything." A lower, flat area of roof was boarded to protect the final surface and plant craned on top of this before being manoeuvred carefully through a removed section of wall.

All other materials were supplied to site on a just-in-time basis as storage space was minimal; a full-time buyer oversaw the m&e supplies. As at Andover, SEC employed a single, local electrical wholesaler, in this case Wilts, under a framework agreement, which aided in storage and delivery.

The building has been handed over in stages, the final one scheduled for 23 April. External landscaping will complete in June, at which point staff will move in.