The Fast Show

Landmark architecture is not the only thing St George Wharf, beside the River Thames in Vauxhall, London, has in common with the headquarters of blue-chip companies scattered around the capital. The scheme’s concrete frame, reconstituted stone cladding with factory-fitted windows, and glazed curtain walling - and the way in which their assembly is being managed - could have come straight out the manuals of 1980s, US-style office development that culminated in the likes of Broadgate and Canary Wharf.

It is not the stuff of suburban housebuilding, but shift the site from suburb to city and the product from standard houses to high-rise apartment blocks and the prefabricated building components and fast-track approach of commercial development have one big advantage: speed. It took around 12 months to complete the superstructure of St George Wharf’s first block of 180 apartments, and the next ones could be built even faster.

“In traditional housebuilding the rate of construction can be accelerated or decelerated according to the rate of sales. We don’t have that privilege here,” says Tony Carey, managing director of St George. High land and build costs, and £50m of off-plan sales have pushed the design and build programme into top gear. “The client told me the interest that was clocking up each week at meetings,” says Peter Crossley, director with Broadway Malyan, architect on St George Wharf.

Speed was not the only factor dictating the cladding specification, but it was a key benefit. “The architect preferred reconstituted stone cladding and curtain walling to brick as a counterbalance to the neighbouring MI5 building,” explains Carey. “On face value, it is much more expensive per square metre - as much as 50% more than a whole elevation of brick and conventional windows. But when you take into account speed of build, ease of maintenance and savings in not needing to scaffold the building, they justify opting for prefabrication. There is also a marketing advantage, because the absence of scaffolding allows buyers to see what a building will look like.”

Quick-fit build components are being combined with time-saving programming. The concrete frame for the first block was being built while the cladding was being tendered and designed. Buyers moved into the first four floors of the block while the top floors were still a building site. And St George is managing trades differently. “We’ve borrowed from production engineering and got more refined programming,” says Carey. “There is much tighter control of trade sequencing to give continuity of work for trades. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better than it has ever been.” Performance on the first block is providing benchmarks for continuous improvement on the project.

“We tried to limit the number of sub-contractors so that the interfacing, which is very complex, is limited and so that they take maximum responsibility for the building,” says Crossley. “The least number of joints in a building, whether it be physical or in the team, the better.”