Dealing with unwelcome surprises
Richard Spackman was asked about how Capital & Centric de-risks projects. “We come from a place of experience and conduct surveys and have conversations with our contractors as early as we can. The more we know up front, the easier it is to manage all the outcomes. But doing that requires quite a lot of intrusive investigation work. And if you’ve got a listed asset, you need to be 100% confident on what your planning outcome is going to be. The local authorities can be helpful in these circumstances. Some of them are great. A little bit of pragmatism can make the difference.”
Jason Ward, of Morgan Sindall Construction, was asked to provide an example of where a repurposing project had turned out to be more challenging than it had appeared at the outset. He chose Oldham Town Hall – a conversion Morgan Sindall completed with BDP in 2017, and which became a RIBA award winner.
The project saw a grand collection of Grade II listed civic buildings retained that might otherwise have continued to deteriorate towards no return. A number of uses were considered and tested before it was finally decided to convert the buildings to a multi-screen cinema and restaurant complex.
“When we first started to look at Oldham Town Hall at tender stage, there was a lot of the existing assets still there,” recalled Jason Ward. “Some of it was amazing, particularly the architectural features internally. Once we got past the first tender stage, it was evident to us and the client that it needed quite a significant enabling works package to fully understand the building. Quite a few challenges came out of that process.
Jason continued… As we examined the existing structure, it became clear it was in very poor condition. It had been left for 25 years unattended, with windows and roof lights open. There was a lot of rot and mould.
As we started to strip that away, we realised that we were back to an existing facade. That was it. That was all that was left. So how do we then fit it out with seven new cinemas and seven new restaurants? It had to be done in a certain way, a box within a box. You couldn’t rely on the existing structure from an engineering point of view.”
