The University’s Clothworkers Institute serves multiple high-end clients across the globe. As a result, the Institute wished to create a new entrance and meeting space, which would serve its visiting clients. To achieve this, they were keen to commission a refurbishment and fit out of the highest standard. Following a competitive tender exercise, Lodestone Projects was appointed to deliver the works on a design and build basis.
This project comprised the internal refurbishment and fit out of an area on the ground floor of the live, Grade II listed Clothworkers’ Building Central.
The works also included the replacement of a section of an external plant, modifications to outside glazing, and new service routes in the basement of the building. The refurbishment area was formerly used as lab space, and was transformed to include a reception, tea point, meeting room, offices and WCs.
One of the key challenges was related to behavioural management and control.
The University is one of the largest in the UK and home to thousands of students and staff. Ensuring good behaviour, tidiness, compliance with all standards, permit systems and avoiding any delay to teaching and graduations was paramount.
The site was accessed through live areas outside of the works, and damage prevention was also key. To ensure we maintained full compliance with all requirements, we utilised our experience working on campus and explained our plan of action to our supply chain through site inductions and detailed daily briefings.
We also held weekly ‘look ahead’ meetings with the University to plan forthcoming operations. This ensured full alignment and avoided any disruption to planned activities, including graduations.
Close coordination and detailing of bespoke joinery, architectural and service design was the other major challenge to manage. Lodestone Projects’ Josh Donnelly led on design management, organising co-ordination workshops with the relevant members and the design team and supply chain. He also arranged hold point inspections to ensure on-site quality was right first time.
The project was delivered on time, with zero snags at handover.
There were no health or safety incidents throughout the project and the University, nor its tenants, experienced any disruption throughout the works. We also didn’t receive any complaints.