New build £15-£35 million

Gold

Kennedy’s Capital ideas

Woolf negotiated the contract to construct Loxley House based on its previous success for Capital One in the refurbishment of the adjacent Trent House. Loxley House was built as Capital One’s new European Headquarters. The initial brief was to provide 250,000 sq ft of workspace. The rapid expansion of Capital One’s business in both the UK and across Europe resulted in existing facilities reaching capacity within two years of occupation, earlier than the planned five years. This meant that Loxley House needed to commence as quickly as possible and for this reason construction management was chosen as a preferred procurement route in order to progress the design in parallel with the construction. Mark Kennedy had established an excellent working relationship with Capital One and its workforce and built on this foundation - negotiations and planning proceeded quickly. The success is due in no small part to the way Kennedy performed. The team’s strength was based on good records and strong relationships. Kennedy’s ability to communicate across a broad audience from site staff to business leaders enabled the team to act in unison. Throughout the project Kennedy’s proactive approach in the use of IT and modern means of construction enabled him to deliver this project £8m under budget, to an extremely high quality, and slightly ahead of programme. During the construction of Loxley House, Kennedy received double commendation: from the HSE Inspector for the work he did with the unions and for maintaining extremely high standards of health and safety on his site, and high commendation from two senior executives of Capital One, Bill Yontz and Nigel Morris. They both attended the opening of this building, when HRH Prince Charles was invited to officially open Loxley House.

Silver

Going underground

A firm management style coupled with the ability to listen to other’s concerns and make changes when good ideas were put forward led to Andrew Hankin’s success on a 180,000 sq ft office building. He had to meet the tight 87-week programme in order for client Minerva to secure a tenant. With the footprint of the building completely covering the site, Hankin had to negotiate party wall agreements with neighbours and keep disruption to a minimum. The structure was built from the lower ground floor up, and the basement formed using ‘top down’ techniques. Temporary works included structural steel grillage for the tower crane bases, the formation of a mole hole through the car park, and monitoring of the Central Line tube under High Holborn for any movement. Over a 10-week period approximately 20,000 cubic metres of earth were removed from the site to provide a basement. This required strict traffic management in regulating some seventy vehicle movements each day. Health and safety was exemplary on this site, achieved partly by the formation of a ‘no accident behaviour’ team. Hankin held monthly safety review meetings and kept a log. Any daily issues were recorded and dealt with promptly by the site staff. Hankin addressed each problem he encountered laterally, identifying the risk, establishing procedures to monitor each of these issues, leaving Minerva in no doubt it had got the right man.

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