St Botolphs Refurbishment

The brief from the onsite facilities team was a basic furniture layout drawing, a number of pictures showing a lighting scheme and a verbal description of how they wanted the offices, meeting room and kitchen areas to be. TRS took this detail and provided drawings, specification and fixed costs.

The proposed offices were a store area in the basement of the building .The building is an iconic structure in the City of London, built by Skanska in 2012 and the proposed location of the new management suite presented a number of issues.

These issues included the smoke control in the event of a fire, the existing services in the room and restricted ceiling height, the fresh air requirement and the location of air conditioning condensers.

TRS worked with the client to agree a specification and costs.

On receipt of an instruction we submitted our Health & Safety Plan, Quality plan, program of works and financial plan. These were all signed off by the client prior to starting works.

The logistics of working within the building were hampered as two major fit out projects were in progress for part of the time TRS were on site .The delivery of materials and transportation of the materials were strictly controlled via allocated time slots.

The operating times were flexible to ensure there was a minimum of disturbance to the tenants, this was also necessary as we had to connect the new mechanical and electrical services to the existing services during pre-planned shutdown periods.

The dry lining, block work changes, carpentry works and decorating were all carried out by TRS directly employed staff.

The installation of the air conditioning, ductwork modifications and installation together with the hot, cold and waste services were all carried out by TRS directly employed staff.

The lighting and power together with the IT containment works were all carried out by directly employed TRS staff.

The enquiry and instruction originally came from Knight Frank who were managing the building on behalf of the owners. During the course of the project the building was sold and responsibility for the project was handed to the new managing agents CBRE. This presented a number of operational and financial issues which were all addressed whilst the project was delivered through dialogue between our project manager, company secretary and CBRE representatives.

During the pre-construction phase we had identified the need for support from specialist suppliers. A number of the specialists had not worked with TRS previously so it was necessary for these suppliers to go through our accreditation process. The works that were sub contracted included:

• Sprinklers
• Fire detection
• Suspended floor, carpet and vinyl installation
• Suspended ceiling

The restricted working space meant we had to co-ordinate the works to ensure we maintained a safe site whilst maintaining productivity.

The works were completed and following a snagging process handed over to the client

The project provided an ideal opportunity to demonstrate our in-house skills and capability to a major property management company whilst providing experience for the younger members of our staff to work in the commercial office environment.