Great estimations

Have you been to your local public library in the last month? I didn’t think so. The conventional library is often perceived as, if not a forbidding place, a dreary, fusty space which old people inhabit and where talking is outlawed. It’s just not somewhere you want to be.

Challenged with re-engaging the inner city public with their local learning resource centres, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets knew it had to do something drastic and so it embarked on a journey – bumpy at times – to create Ideas Stores, places to make “knowledge gathering open to all”. Burgeoning star architect Adjaye Associates won the competition to design the two buildings, in Whitechapel and Chrisp Street, East London. And, while it set about designing exciting new spaces, the council went about challenging perceived procurement methods in a bid to save time and money.

The two Ideas Stores are very different in form: Whitechapel is a large five-storey building, with some 4500 m2 of floor space, sited on the bustling main road of the same name; while Chrisp Street is smaller, at only two storeys and 1,350m2 with a location above a row of shops. Both are in keeping with the ideal that they be based within a retail/community area with major public footfall and each offers a range of services from book, cd and dvd lending, to internet access and spaces to learn dance or study alternative therapies. They also include cafes and community spaces.

“People wanted the Ideas Stores to be in the high street, where they could pop in while shopping,” says Heather Wills, programme director for Tower Hamlets. “They were put off by the dusty image of the old buildings. We knew that the replacements would need the same high-quality design as the shops which are the biggest competition for people’s time.”

The two building projects didn’t run concurrently as was originally planned

Adjaye Associates was appointed to design the two buildings in June 2001 and the council envisaged that the two schemes would run concurrently. To this end, it procured them together under one contract and appointed Miller Mitchell Burley Lane (MMBL) as project manager and quantity surveyor.

“The projects were designed and procured as one, to achieve economies of scale,” says Wills. And this would have been a masterstroke were it not for a series of unforeseen complications. At Whitechapel, ground conditions proved difficult and deep piling was precluded because the new Crossrail development will run directly under the site. The structure had to be re-engineered to account for this. Tower Hamlets postponed the start of works on Chrisp Street and when work did get underway, the roof covering of the existing building onto which the Ideas Store was to be built also presented problems and delays.

Initially, the intention was to run the projects on a Design and Build basis, a contract form familiar to the client. The use of the same architect, construction team and design ideals boded well for a trouble-free project. However, things panned out differently. “The procurement method changed from Design and Build to BQT (Bill of Quantities Tender) with JCT with Quantities,” says Harry Davies, consultant for MMBL. “The programme became elongated due to the revised works required and the postponement of the start of the Chrisp Street Store.

“With this type of work you can plan for a certain amount of disruption but never all of it. At Whitechapel we couldn’t ascertain the ground works required until we got on to site, while at Chrisp Street there were no plans available to predict the roof structure. So, when we got on site and started to remove the roof screed, we found it was much thicker than originally estimated.”

Visitor numbers are up 282% compared to traditional libraries

Procurement of the construction team was carried out by MMBL. This unusual step helped claw back lost time and enabled the project manager to appoint contractor William Verry and various divisions of Arup: “tried and trusted team members”. The team had a good relationship with the architect and this proved critical as many ideas were being tested as they were installed in what Davies dubs “a moving feast of a project”.

The two building projects didn’t run concurrently as was originally planned. Chrisp Street was completed and opened in July 2004, while its big sister in Whitechapel was built between mid 2004 and September 2005. This change in programming on the part of the client and project manager has actually worked in their favour because, while they didn’t make the time savings envisaged various design flaws, such as cast vinyl floors that scratched too easily, were picked up from Chrisp Street and omitted from the Whitechapel building.

The council also demanded firm cost controls throughout both projects and while the architect was disappointed at the omission of a major feature escalator to the upper stories of the Whitechapel building, Davies sees this as an economic necessity. “The building didn’t suffer in any real way,” he says, “and this is part of the collaborative process between designer, contractor and cost control teams.”

The projects have since been praised as a “bold new development in learning resource centres”. Visitor numbers are up 282%, when compared to traditional libraries in the borough, and Tower Hamlets is continuing to build more Ideas Stores, the latest of which opened in Canary Wharf in March 2006.