Introduction

The Nottingham Police Secure Custody suite built just off Radford Road, Nottingham continued the close working partnering relationship of PCE Ltd with Main Contractor Willmot Dixon who delivered the £17.8 million project for Nottinghamshire Police, with Gleeds as Project Managers, Architects Corstorphine + Wright, and HSP Consulting Engineers Ltd The project, built to replace the old city centre Victorian Bridewell was the 15th Secure Custody suite in recent times that PCE had been undertaken with the company being responsible for the design, offsite manufacture and onsite assembly of 5 cell block wings. containing 50 holding cells for male, female and young offenders in addition to ancillary rooms and a charge desk area.

PCE had agreed their programme of onsite works to be undertaken in 6 weeks. Despite the overall project start on site being at the commencement of the first Covid pandemic lockdown due to enhanced development of the design process and details, a more efficient manufacturing strategy as well as improvement of onsite assembly methods the multi-skilled PCE site team completed the assembly in only 4 weeks.

As usual Health and Safety of all was the top priority and the site programme reduction of a third was achieved without any accidents or associated issues, including the extra safe working requirements that had to be developed and implemented due to the pandemic. The reduction in site assembly duration and other time gained due to the manufacturing strategy meant that the overall programme saving achieved was 6 weeks.