Located in the heart of Slough, the office building at 25 Windsor Road has been transformed.
The Client’s desire to improve the floor plate and create sub-tenancy flexibility drove the design to enhance the atrium and rationalise the cores to deliver improved net to gross efficiency.
The development has added a new floor with west facing terrace, together with a modern reception, so that more than 108,000ft² of office space is now provided over six floors wrapped around the central atrium.
The building uses a reverse cycle variable refrigerant flow (VRF) heat pump system to provide the office area heating and cooling. The efficiencies thus provided, along with ventilation heat recovery, LED lighting and sophisticated lighting controls and the building envelope thermal performance, have all enabled the building to achieve a Very Good BREEAM rating and an A rated EPC.
Sustainability initiatives include LED lighting with occupancy detection and daylight dimming controls, solar thermal hot water heating, air source heat pumps and photovoltaic panels, resulting in an EPC rating of A and a Very Good rating under BREEAM New Construction (Industrial) 2014.
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.
Watkins Payne carried out the Independent Design Review role for Block A at The Soapworks development.
The building services use a 4-pipe fan coil unit arrangement with various ventilation systems to suit the different use areas. Full building power back-up standby generation, UPS, security and access control and automatic blinds all formed part of the fit-out.
The exposed services strategy implemented at Fortess Grove compliments the industrial nature of the building. Cycling facilities are provided along with showers and lockers at ground floor level accessed directly from the rear of the building along Railey Mews. The development achieved a WiredScore certification of ‘Gold’ and a B rated Energy Performance Certification.
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.