New build & refurbishment over £36m
Gold – James Williams, Mace
Project: 12-14 New Fetter Lane, London: Construction of 15-storey office block completed in 117 weeks
Value: £46m
Contract: JCT D&B 2011
An enormously challenging programme, a bursting-at-the-seams budget and a tight site in a busy location held no fears for new Mace recruit James Williams. He not only triumphed on all three fronts but delivered exceptional quality too.
So successful was he that the client was able to sell on this 15-storey office block midway through construction for a handsome return on its investment.
Originally priced in 2011, the project faced a suppliers’ market when procurement began. Williams deftly handled supply chain brinkmanship to strike deals and secure the core packages.
As for the ambitious programme, he drove it forward through excellent sequencing and logistics insights. For example, the original brief positioned one crane in the boiler room location, severely hampering the effort to get the building weatherproof and progressing the MEP. Williams’s solution was to perch it on a concrete cap on top of one of the low-rise lifts. He also modularised the intricate cladding and large sections of the services.
The logistics he streamlined by bringing the cladding panels through the floors and distributing them by the hoist. They were then installed from within the building floorplate by using a spider crane on the floor above. It was safer and faster than working at height above a busy pedestrian walkway in an area of dense commercial offices.
His controlled project close-out drove quality. He made sure the planning brought in sufficient materials for each area so that the trades could fully complete an area before offering it for snagging. The strategy drastically reduced revisits for missing items.
He introduced benchmarking with mock-ups that set the quality standard. Combined with tablet-based snagging software that freed package managers from paperwork in the office and got them out onto site, it delivered an exceptional level of craftsmanship and quality.
Silver – Paul Fowles, Kier Construction
Project: Princess Royal Grandstand, Cheltenham Racecourse: 20-month rebuild of grandstand
Value: £39m
Contract: JCT D&B 2011
With the client determined to run a full racing and events programme during this 20-month-long scheme, Paul Fowles’ race course project was like a game of chess. Each time the client held a race meeting, work would come to a standstill so complete that you could be lulled into thinking nothing at all was going on. Fowles moved his people around the board while The Jockey Club sought to move the racing public into the same spaces.
It involved rather more than just downing tools for a few days, however. For example, three weeks before the first race day of the project, there were 200 workers on site amid the gaping holes and piles of rubble of a race course that was now 50% construction site. Fowles had to release most of that back to the client in time for the first race meeting.
He pulled it off by reassuring the client with precisely detailed plans. He also motivated his workforce to return all the working areas to a no-sign-of-construction condition for each race day. He then helped the client’s staff set up 36 hours before the public was welcomed in – a process that usually takes weeks.
The site was closed down and reopened 16 times during the project. Each time it was accomplished so successfully that no customer complaint was received despite the unforgiving gaze of the world’s press and TV cameras. Indeed, the race course won The Jockey Club’s Best Customer Experience Award and the Racegoers Club’s Best Racecourse of the Year Award during the construction period.
Fowles encouraged innovative ideas from the supply chain, which resulted in the fitting of the balustrades to the precast balcony units at ground level in the factory rather than 80 feet in the air. It maintained programme and reduced the cost of safety equipment as the finished design provided edge protection for the facade works.
To improve buildability and the finish of the grandstand, he changed the internal floor from precast to metal deck composite. And using a wholly precast deck for the crescent walkway gave the exposed soffit a high-quality finish.
New build & refurbishment £20m-£36m
Gold – John Cole, Sir Robert McAlpine
Project: The Grande, Aberdeen: construction of eight-storey office & 12-level car park completed in 87 weeks
Value: £34m
Contract: SBCC DB/Scott 2011
Few construction managers have John Cole’s determination. This is a man who, hospitalised following a motorcycle accident late on in the contract, was attending project progress meetings by video conference less than a week after being discharged.
Cole had thought through this job for an eight-storey 13,600 sq m office block base build and fit-out from the outset. He established the risks on the tight programme and budget, assessed the pinch points on the critical paths, and acted forcefully but collaboratively to expedite and mitigate matters.
As soon as the project got on site, the problems multiplied. He dealt with the discovery of possible unexploded ordnance professionally and rapidly, maximising safety while minimising delay.
When the piling and steelwork packages came in over budget. Cole responded by bringing the whole team together to find ways to take cost out.
Logistics were a potential nightmare. The site was next to a big shopping mall, surrounded by main roads feeding the harbour and city centre, and had little storage and even less laydown area. Cole persuaded a local developer to provide storage facilities and holding areas.
With the programme unable to wait until a steel mill could roll the cellular beams, he got the steelwork contractor to take on the beam fabrication. The eight weeks saved maintained the superstructure programme.
Cole took responsibility for delivering on time, to quality and within budget. He did so by fostering collaboration through subcontractor walkarounds, and design, client and coordination meetings. And also by working weekends and attending night shifts so his presence and support could be seen and felt by the team.
When a tenant completely changed the fit-out proposal halfway through the build phase, Cole quickly appraised the effect on programme and cost, while skilfully and diplomatically catering to the concerns of client and tenant. He delivered the budget, the timetable and the quality.
Silver – Anthony Mitchell MCIOB, ISG
Project: TPP Headquarters, Leeds: construction of four-storey office building, completed in 109 weeks
Value: £21m
Contract: JCT D & B 2011
Seven extensions of time totalling 193 days is a key statistic from this complex construction of a steel-framed four-storey office above a reinforced concrete box with two levels of underground parking.
The programme almost doubled as a result, but it shines a light on the heart of the matter: Mitchell’s unerring ability to give the client exactly what it wanted. With more than 1,000 variations to process for a client that wanted to get its new HQ absolutely right, he was able to communicate the reasoning for each extension of time so effectively that every one was awarded unchallenged.
For Mitchell, it was client, client, client. Thus the significant value-engineering options he offered, such as a £500,000 saving on the window system and the same again on the metalwork, roof tiles and boarding system. And the efforts he made to build the uninterrupted flexible internal spaces with interconnected delta beams spanning up to 18m and creating soffits with sightlines from front to rear.
The logistics of fitting more than 900 precast concrete planks weighing up to 12.5 tonnes each with the imported delta beams and steel frame had to be perfect due to the limited site space.
Materials were photographed as they entered the site gates to check for damage and compliance with specification. All works were periodically checked throughout the day – any anomalies, and work could not proceed the next day.
The goal of sign-off with zero defects, zero reportable incidents and zero environmental incidents was achieved.
