Project Details
- Client Name: Metropolitan Police Service
- Project Value: Up to £10 million
- Sector: Blue light
- Services: Architecture, Quantity Surveying, Project Management, Health & Safety, Energy & Environmental, Cost Consultancy, Building Surveying, Building Services Engineering
- Key partners: Wilmott Dixon, Overbury, Ellis and Moore, L&C Engineers
- Contact: Rob Ireland – 020 8294 1000
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is in the process of transforming its estate, developing retained buildings to provide facilities fit to support a modern police service. The works involve adapting existing buildings to provide more open plan and agile working spaces and incorporating the latest IT technology.
Under a multi-disciplinary appointment, we are the Lead Consultant on the refurbishment works to eight stations and have been appointed from RIBA Stage 3 onwards, where our remit covers all the key design services. We undertook a comprehensive review of the design and report information available from RIBA Stage 1-2, accompanied by our own survey and inspections of the buildings by all design disciplines. A key challenge we encountered was obtaining access to all areas of the buildings to carry out our surveys, as some areas could not be accessed due to the operational needs of the police. We employed a risk-based approach to make assumptions based on our knowledge and experience then engaged with stakeholders to identify when there would be an opportunity to obtain access and complete our survey to ratify our findings.
We have led the design development, ensuring engagement of all key stakeholders so that the designs are in accordance with the MPS design guides and meet the expectations of the end user groups. The design has been developed within a BIM environment, including development of detailed models of stations and incorporation of discipline designs into the model as the designs progress. A key area of review is ensuring the proposed design achieves optimal environmental performance, and we have utilised thermal modelling software to inform overheating calculations and rationalise the use of thermal cooling in lieu of natural ventilation wherever possible.
We have also acted as project manager/contract administrator to deliver the works on site, working collaboratively with the client and contractor to maintain the operational capacity of the buildings with particular focus on site/building security.
