Hull Business Centre

Client: NPS Humber Ltd
Contract: Design and Construction of Refurbishment of offices at Hull Business Centre

As part of their consolidation of existing assets Hull City Council tendered this scheme using JCT design and construct form of contract, this was secured following a 50/50 price/quality assessment by the client for the sum was £992,094.43.

The remit under the contract was to carry out the design and construction of internal alterations to create a modern office space and associated meeting rooms split over 4 floors for approximately 170 staff and totalling approximately 1500m² within Hull Business Centre in the Centre of Hull, including obtaining necessary consents.

The original programme was 30 weeks, but following some delays beyond our control the programme was revised to 41 weeks. With mitigation measures put in place we were able to deliver the project 7 weeks ahead of the revised programme achieving the clients’ dates for moving into the new offices.

The scope of works within the programme included:

• Prepare, submit and obtain planning approval and listed building consent.
• Replacement windows to all elevations (Subject to listed building consent).
• Repairs to external elevations and rebranding of the warehouse from ‘Hull Business Centre’ to ‘Warehouse No. 9’ to accord with the buildings’ original title (Subject to listed Building consent).
• Full strip out internally.
• Install new lift for DDA compliance.
• Construction of new plant room to house M&E services and new incoming supplies.
• Formation of meeting rooms and office spaces to accord with Client specified requirements.
• New electrical services throughout including LED lighting.
• New heating and plumbing throughout.
• New roof covering.
• Obtain Building regulations approval and discharge all planning and listed building consents.

At the outset of the project we created a sample room of all the various finishes, fixtures and fittings to allow the client to provide approval of materials and confirm their chosen colour schemes.

Due to the age of the building, the introduction of the new layouts and requirements to meet current standards presented numerous challenges for ourselves and our design team, in particular, the introduction of new heating and electrical services installations throughout without adversely affecting the existing listed structure.

Whilst not a requirement of the project, we also took our first steps into BIM, with the preparation of a simple BIM model to indicate the pipework routes around the building for heating and water services. This provided invaluable information to avoid clashes with existing openings allowing us to overcome the issues before install.

The resultant project was a bright, open office space with modern facilities and meeting rooms. The project was shortlisted for both the ‘Listed Building under £5m’ and ‘offices under 2000sqm’ categories of the AJ Retrofit awards in 2016.

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