Watkins Payne provided MEP systems and IT cabling design services for the fit-out of 186,000ft² of commercial offices in the eight storey 1 Forbury Place in Reading, which formed the focus of SSE Services plc’s relocation strategy to consolidate several buildings from across southern England and accommodate 1,500 employees in a single location.
The Cat B fit-out design supports agile working, collaboration and connectivity, optimising employee and visitor comfort. Facilities include a café with catering facilities on the ground floor, main and secondary plant equipment rooms, a sixth floor conference and meeting rooms suite, and agile open plan office areas on other floors consisting of collaboration spaces, meeting pods and booths with VC facilities.
The majority of the base build MEP systems were retained, adapted and modified with flexibility in mind, to ‘future proof’ and support the Client’s needs.
The base build air conditioning, which is provided by electric VRF systems was modified to suit the fit-out. A standby generator was installed for resilience, and a fully networked CCTV and security access control system was provided to meet the Client’s operational requirements.
The Practice also assisted the Client in the initial due diligence exercise as part of the lease negotiations.
234 Bath Road development located in Slough is arranged over ground, first and second floors, with a basement level car park and podium level car park to the rear. The development constructed in 2016 stand at 68,000 ft2 of office accommodation. Part of the ground office floor area was utilised to provide a café to enhance the amenities within the development.
The property situated on the A23 near Brighton was granted permission by the council under permitted development rights to change to a residential site from office development to provide 63 apartments. The apartments are separate over seven stories consisting of one, two and three bed apartments. The redeveloped to offer 59,000ft² of high quality residential accommodation, for which Watkins Payne supplied building services engineering and energy consultancy to achieve an EPCs between B – C rating.
Academy House was refurbished to provide 22,100ft² of high quality office accommodation. Watkins Payne supplied building services engineering which saw the 3rd to 6th floor including the ground floor reception of Academy House converted into open plan office areas and reception. This became the London headquarters for Sports Direct.
Sustainability is incredibly important for the Client and as such the building is BREEAM ‘Outstanding’, WELL ‘enabled’ Gold, alongside WiredScore Platinum. In addition, the Design for Performance approach is been adopted in order to minimise operational energy and hence carbon emissions.
The project also involved the refurbishment of the reception space and improvement of the cycle store entrance and wayfinding at basement level.
This prestigious development is focused on delivering best-in-class workplace standards while achieving high levels of sustainability, occupant wellbeing and energy efficiency.