Woolgar Hunter Magazine | issue 2 - spring-summer 2016
Focus on Commercial Offices Ask The Engineer Piling Over Crossrail Back To School Copenhagen visit
welcome to this second edition of LAYOUT
index
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areas of expertise
6
sector review: commercial offices
8
ask the engineer
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piling over Crossrail
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sector review: education
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our teams: telecoms
editorial I am delighted to introduce this new edition of our magazine. In this edition we have a welcome contribution from Bill Colville of Cushman & Wakefield to our Commercial Offices feature, together with a host of articles from our own team. Since the last edition it has been a busy time for all at Woolgar Hunter: with a number of significant new commissions in the Public and Private sectors, which is especially pleasing given the still uncertain market. The education and health sectors have held up well with new schools commissions in both the east and west of the country; and two large health projects at Ninewells in Dundee and at the next phase of the Royal Edinburgh mental health campus in Morningside. Our feature article presents our involvement with the Shurgard selfstorage facility rollout in London, which became particularly exciting for us when it involved piling over two new Crossrail tunnels at the only point where Crossrail crosses the River Thames. We have just completed a move for our Glasgow Office, to West George Street. This office will give us much needed additional office space together with more meeting rooms and critique space, which will enable our continued growth. More of this in the next issue! I trust you will find something of interest to you in this magazine and that the articles demonstrate our experience and enthusiasm for engineering.
If we can be of assistance to help realise your aims, please call us.
William Neilson Managing Director
Head Office 226 West George Street Glasgow G2 2PQ +44 (0)141 332 0471 info@woolgarhunter.com www.woolgarhunter.com index | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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areas of expertise retail
custodial
geo-environmental
education
healthcare
urbanism
commercial
telecoms
residential
hotels and leisure
historic buildings
industrial
Our workload is varied across a number of industry sectors, ranging from engineering design on projects predominantly in the Private Sector such as commercial; retail; residential; hotel & leisure and industrial sectors; through to more Public Sector oriented education and healthcare projects.
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We also specialise in providing telecommunication infrastructure design for mobile communications sectors. Our geo-environmental team is actively involved in collaboration on urbanism studies providing advice on regeneration & master-planning projects.
Fusion Appartments, Glasgow The People’s Trust, Community Centre, Dalmarnock Lairdsland Primary School, Kirkintilloch - Copyright Š David Cadzow - 2016 Crane currently on site of a new Motel One hotel in Glasgow Clydebank Leisure Centre, Clydebank Concrete pouring at Ineos H.Q. - Grangemouth Woolgar Hunter new offices at 226 West George Street, Glasgow At height structural survey
areas of expertise | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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sector review commercial offices
CARPE DIEM
In each edition of LAYOUT , we will take the opportunity to shine the spotlight on a number of sectors we work in; and to showcase some of our individual projects. In this edition we look at education (see page 13) and in this article, at the commercial office sector.
LAYOUT asked Bill Colville, a Partner at Cushman &Wakefield, with whom we have worked on many successful projects, for his thoughts on the commercial office market. Thankfully for us Bill chose to seize the moment!
Bill Colville is a Partner at Cushman & Wakefield and Head of Development in Scotland: Glasgow’s transformation continues at pace, with economic shifts and city wide investment opening up new avenues of prosperity and opportunity. Glasgow is both Scotland’s largest urban economy and one of the fastest growing cities in the UK. The backbone of this growth is Glasgow’s Economic Leadership, formed in 2012 with the aim of attracting the right mix of business, innovation and investment and building upon the city’s existing excellent infrastructure provisions. Glasgow as a result is fast becoming one of the most diverse, forward thinking occupier locations in Europe while being globally competitive in a number of sectors from specialist high-value products and related key services (financial services, global business services, creative and digital sector, life science sector, energy (including renewables), education, tourism, technology and engineering). Excellent infrastructure and digital connectivity, highly skilled, flexible
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Occupiers with larger requirements failing to act now will face limited opportunities at lease event
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workforces, excellent quality of life and running costs significantly lower than other major cities are increasingly working together in the city’s favour. With Scottish and UK governments committing £1.13b of pump-priming investment to the Glasgow & Clyde Valley Region City Deal, infrastructure, labour market and innovation funding is expected to create 28,000 permanent jobs.
6 | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 | sector review: commercial offices
This fund, one of the biggest single funds agreed in a city deal, will support the delivery of a once in a generation investment into Glasgow’s infrastructure. “Active demand is also spreading to market peripheries as corporates search for best accommodation” With a number of business sectors across the UK also becoming increasingly footloose, and sector clusters re-shaping location strategies, opportunities for occupiers to secure property at affordable rents are however quickly being eroded. With predictions of higher demand the city’s office market is anticipated to witness significant rental growth over the next 5 years as the already limited supply of Grade A accommodation, erodes. As investors too continue their search for appropriate returns further downward pressure is anticipated as rental growth kicks in and occupiers absorb the already limited pool of suitable accommodation. As a consequence the Glasgow office market will soon move beyond its current tipping point. Presently, occupiers and landlords in Glasgow have the opportunity to work together to deliver substantial new projects with strong returns on investment. Rental growth in Glasgow is yet to record the significant uplifts witnessed elsewhere in other UK locations but rents are anticipated to come under significant upwards pressure when the city’s current grade A stock lets up within the next 3 to 6 months. Focus is mounting on developers to start the next wave of Grade A speculative development as investors look to secure first mover advantage and capitalise on the maximum “headroom” on offer in terms of rental growth and yield gap potential in Glasgow which sits well when compared to other UK locations. In a market that is becoming increasingly well positioned as a corporate occupier destination, the current supply shortfall is creating a strong case for investment.
design criteria
site project history summary sub-structure
sub-structure site history super structure
Sector Review: Our workload in this sector remains strong with a good spread of pre-let and speculative projects. A few of the milestones achieved since the last edition are:
sustainability design outline specs criteria
Scale ofsustainability project outline specs
frame topped out: frame frame up completed on sit design e on up sit the e Grangemouth: In December, steel frame was completed on the new Ineos HQ building. In all, 950 tonnes of steel was erected in a little less than three months. The new 70,000ft2 HQ is designed with 18m span floors to provide an internal column-free environment to allow maximum flexibility for the tenant fit out.
supersub-structure structure Drainage
sustainability design criteria
Drainage super structure
design: Wedesign have a number of onnewbuild office sit design e blocks under design, and a large refurbishment project at 50 Bothwell Street, not far from the successful Aurora Building we engineered a little over 10 years ago. Scale of project outline specs Our vision
Scale of project Our vision
completed: completed frame up In Aberdeen, letting
completed the new Wood Group PSN letting Office Building at Altens, was handed over in January. It comprises Ground plus 3 storey, 216,025ft2 of Grade A office space developed by HFD Property Group. The building has a full basement car park as well as surface parking, which incorporates an area of decked parking to the rear.
sustainability outline specs
Scale of project outline specs
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Drainage
On site: frame frame up In we saw acompleted site start at 122 onJanuary situp e Waterloo Street, Glasgow, part of the wider Bothwell Exchange development. This is a 150,000ft2 steel framed HQ building, ten storeys tall; being developed byOurHFD Property Group and pre-let to vision Morgan Stanley.
letting: Our most recently completed Grade A letting office building in Glasgow, 1Â West Regent Street is letting well with lawyers Sheppard & Wedderburn recently taking space. The 143,000ft2 building is now 70% let and seen as a commercial success.
Steelwork complete at INEOS HQ Building, Grangemouth
sector review: commercial offices | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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comp letting
In this new feature, our team of experts will try to answer one of our most commonly asked questions per edition. In this edition Patricia Bryson, who is Director of our Geoenvironmental team, looks at the ever increasing cost of waste disposal, and the implications for development.
Question: Why does it now cost so much more to take soil off-site than it used to? Patricia Bryson: This is a very interesting question and one that I’m asked almost daily. It’s definitely true to say that the cost of disposing of waste soil has rocketed in recent years and also that the associated system has become more complicated. There are two main elements to waste costs: the haulage /disposal cost, and the associated Landfill Tax. Whilst there have been increases in the former, with Landfill Tax currently set at £84.50/tonne*, and ever rising; the tax element is largely responsible for the recent increase in cost of waste disposal. The UK Landfill Tax was introduced as far back as 1996 and was the UK’s first environmental tax, designed to help the UK meet its EU waste reduction targets. At the initial rate of £7/tonne, there was little incentive to consider alternatives to landfill, and although the rate rose steadily (to £48/tonne by 2010), an exemption from the tax was in place for contaminated soil, meaning that disposal to landfill tended to remain a viable option. The big change came in April 2012 with the removal of the Landfill Tax exemption, and significant increase in rate to £70/tonne. There was an almost instant move away from disposing of surplus soils to landfill, such was the cost implication.
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8 | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 | ask the engineer
Construction
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Moving forward, Landfill Tax is an item that was devolved to the Scottish Parliament in 2015. In line with the former UK-wide mechanism, Scottish Landfill Tax is charged at two rates and currently stands at £84.50 per tonne* for standard rate waste, and £2.65 / tonne for lower rate waste. The intention is that landfilling should only be an option of last resort and in this respect; landfill tax has undeniably achieved the intended result, and has brought about innovation in thinking and in treatment technologies. At Woolgar Hunter we are currently asked to undertake 3-D modelling of almost every site to try to balance earthworks; or at the very least, to minimise the amount of surplus soil generated. The intricacy of the models and capability of the software has increased markedly in the last few years. There was an initial disconnect with waste legislation which prevented the movement and re-use of soils across sites; however, this has been addressed by the SEPA Land remediation and waste management guidelines publication. Our geo-environmental engineers work increasingly closely with our civil engineering colleagues to develop earthwork and remediation strategies to manage contaminated soils within sites. In recent years a greater variety of remediation technologies have become available for dealing with contaminated sites and soil treatment centres have opened, which offer the advantage of not attracting Landfill Tax. It is also worth noting that , we have increased in the use of remediation techniques such as lime modification to make marginal soils suitable for re-use in earthworks. Most recently, as of October 2015 significant changes to the Scottish system mean that more soils are now eligible for disposal at the lower rate of tax ; however the system remains complex, and is fraught with potential pitfalls – but that’s a column for another day!
*Rates correct as at 1st of April 2016
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ask the engineer | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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spotlight crossrail
PILING OVER CROSSRAIL “
The driver behind the project is the booming property market in the greater London area, which makes sites with high abnormal costs still viable. In this case the abnormal costs involved piling over twin Crossrail tunnels!
T HAT WAS TH E OBV I OU S SOLUTION, B U T CO U L D I T B E DON E WITHIN BUD GET ?
10 | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 | spotlight: Crossrail
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size of 10,000m2) have been built at Park Royal (shown on the left), Chingford and Woolwich and Paul’s team is currently working on the design of four more. It may surprise people to learn that the market for these facilities has increasingly spread to private individuals who have simply run out of space in their city dwellings, and need extra space to store their belongings. Shurgard UK provides quality self storage facilities and with the opening of the Woolwich site they now have 25 facilities within the M25 corridor, and an ambitious expansion programme. The site at Woolwich not only had tunnels below it, but the shallow ground conditions were very poor, as a result of a layer of made ground and buried peat, overlying London Clay.With a wry smile, Paul explains that a further complication arose from the high risk of unexploded ordnance as a result of the location of the site within the old London Arsenal!
The original substructure design offered to Crossrail involved boring more than 1000 CFA piles. I challenged Paul to come up with a better solution that would save me time and money. The team managed to convince Crossrail that the use of CHD piling was just as effective as the approved CFA method, thus reducing the substructure piles to circa 350, shaving 3 weeks off the construction programme and approximately ÂŁ300,000 from the budget
Robert Grant
Director of Construction, Europe. Shurgard
There is no doubt that one of the most exciting and challenging engineering projects in recent years within the UK is the Crossrail project. It has involved sinking miles of twin tunnels in the south east of England and admirably beneath the busy streets of London. The works are still ongoing especially the construction of new stations. Set against this background, a request last year to design a building to sit above a newly complete stretch of shallow tunnels in Woolwich is one of the most challenging Paul McKay, one of our Project Directors has faced. The project is now complete and LAYOUT took some time out with Paul to see how it went, and to find out if he is now managing to get some sleep at night! Sitting in the Glasgow office of Woolgar Hunter, Paul explains that the driver behind the project is the property market booming in the greater London area, which makes sites with high abnormal costs still viable. In this case the abnormal costs involved piling over twin Crossrail tunnels! Paul’s Building Structures team is working with Shurgard UK designing a number of self-storage facilities in the London area. In the last year, three units (average
Woolgar Hunter inherited a preliminary scheme for a previous team, which utillised CFA piles. Driven piles would have been ideal but Crossrail was concerned that the driven piles could damage the rail tunnels and so a CFA solution was proposed. The problem was, the CFA was too expensive. Paul explains that through close collaboration with the specialist piling contractor, Bachy Solentenche, his team developed an economic solution which involved providing short displacement piles at close centres to transfer the building loads to a reasonable bearing strata some 8m below the surface. The solution resulted in a significant reduction in the number of piles when compared with the original design by others. We are happy to report that the installation of the piles went without a hitch; in fact so much so that the project is to be featured in an upcoming edition of Ground Engineering magazine, as it is an unusual pile solution within the London area. The building was completed on programme and opened in November 2015.
spotlight: Crossrail | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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Lairdsland Primary School winner of ‘Development of the Year (Public Buildings)’ at Scottish Property Awards 2016
Copyright © David Cadzow - 2016
12 | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 | sector review: education
sector review education
The education sector is currently a hive of activity, with long overdue redevelopment and refurbishment of Scotland’s Primary and Secondary schools estate. In the last few years, most Projects have been procured through the HUB process, although we have recently noticed an upturn in directly procured schools projects from local councils. Many projects have been caught up in the recent funding confusion concerning the Scottish Futures Trust; however it would appear that this may be resolved, at least in part, as projects are now coming back on line. Woolgar Hunter is proud to be playing its part in the renewal of the schools estate across the country with several notable projects recently completed, currently under design or on site. completed: We were pleased to be involved in the award winning Lairdsland Primary School in Kirkintilloch, designed by Walters Cohen Architects and procured through the hub West Scotland. The design maximises its unique site by the Forth and Clyde Canal, and by means of a slender and efficient steel frame, creates a wonderfully open and bright learning space for the pupils. The site was not without its engineering challenges; a trunk sewer and marina quay wall structures required to be designed around, and contaminated ground required careful management of earthworks and a remedial capping layer. This design has been used as an examplar adapted and rolled out to a series of new schools in the area. on site: Dalbeattie Learning Campus: This ia a “through school” with primary and secondary schools combined. The building is designed by Holmes Miller architects and takes a more ‘domestic’ form in keeping with its rural location.
Pitched roofs are formed by means of timber SIPS panels spanning between steel rafters. This is a challenging site with very poor ground conditions requiring ground improvement, preloading and piled foundations. Local flooding issues have largely dictated the site profiling and layout. design: We are pleased to be working on a series of further large school campus projects in the south west of Scotland : Kilmarnock Learning Campus, a £40m new through school on the site of the current James Hamilton Academy. Designed by Norr architects, the architecture has a restrained and classical style, while the structure will be formed in a post-tensioned and reinforced concrete frame to create a modern, adaptable and environmentally sustainable building. Dumfries Learning Town; this is a very ambitious project that aims to entirely renew the secondary schools of the town. A phased project, we are currently developing the designs for the North West and North East campuses. These buildings are again designed by Holmes Miller and build on some of the same themes as the Dalbeattie project. Ground conditions are particularly challenging at the North West Campus site, which is a reclaimed loch and former town refuse tip. In the east of the country, we have been rolling out a series of new Primary schools for Midlothian council with AHR Architects, with projects currently on site at Bilston and Gorebridge, and out to tender for Paradykes and Roslin. Extensive use has been made of timber frames on these projects, providing a sustainable and cost effective structural solution.
sector review: education | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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our teams In a new feature to LAYOUT , we turn the spotlight on one of the four divisions within Woolgar Hunter, Building Structures, Civil Engineering, Geo-environmental Engineering and Telecoms. In this issue we speak to Cameron Murray who runs our Telecoms team. The Telecoms team, or to give them their full title the Telecoms Infrastructure team, as the name suggests, is involved in the design, construction and maintenance of infrastructure associated with cellular networks, that to the lay person is the masts & towers, base stations, street works and rooftop installations which ensure you get mobile phone coverage when you need it. Woolgar Hunter first worked in this market in the mid 1990’s and the market is still growing. Early predictions about the amount of data that would need to fly through the air were wildly out and the need for more capacity shows no signs of abating soon. 3G, 4G and soon to be widely available 5G and the ‘Internet of things’ means the need to increase the data carrying capacity keeps Cameron’s team busy with eye watering deadlines along the way. Two of the fundamental issues with data transferral in a cellular network is line of sight and coverage - that means height; be it masts, towers or rooftops the antenna need to be at height, and our team needs to get them up there. We asked Cameron, what that entails for him and his team?
“ It means our guys need to get out of the office and get up in the air! ” But for Cameron that is the fun part, “there is nothing better than setting out on a crisp clear spring day in a jeep, finding the site, which is not always easy and spending the day climbing a tower. The site team’s role is usually to survey the tower to allow a structural model to be built so that the office guys can analyse it to determine if it can take replacement or additional kit. We also do regular condition surveys to make sure the towers are safe. We normally work as two-man teams but on some of the higher climbs we have three man crews. My team are trained not only as climbers, but trained in rescue and first aid at height so they are prepared in the unlikely event we have an incident on a tower”.
The ever changing nature of telecoms has meant that equipment on structures is continually being upgraded, meaning we need to continually re-analyse structures; in many cases the towers require to be strengthened to carry additional loading from new kit; or in the worst case swap out with new ones. “Sometimes we are given good records drawings, sometimes we don’t and we have to climb” Cameron says with a grin. The outdoor life suits Cameron and his team and the excitement of working in a multi-site rollout is what keeps them going especially when the weather’s not great. Cameron’s two trusted lieutenants are his Design Manager, Paul O’Brian and Grant Cooper who is his Lead Climber. As a team they run a tight ship, managing to combine the freedom of the outdoors but still nailing deadlines!
If you wish any further information on our work in the Telecoms sector or if we can be assistance to you, please don’t hesitate to contact Cameron at cmurray@woolgarhunter.com
Nyhavn
Tietgenkollegiet
Royal Cast Collection
16 | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 | cultural trips - Copenhagen
The Little Mermaid
Hotel Bella Sky
discovering europe's most influencial cities
Recruitment and retention of good people is one of the most important tasks for the management of Woolgar Hunter. Tom Peters of McKinsky Management Consultants famously said ‘ We are in a great war for talent’. A little closer to home our founder, Des Woolgar used to say “as consultants, all we have is people and ideas, we don’t make widgets”. In recent years the stories about skills shortages in the media have become more frequent and staff recruitment is an issue. At Woolgar Hunter we try and focus on attracting people who we believe will embrace our values and add to our offering for clients. Our aim is create an atmosphere within the office which is a supportive and creative for all our staff. To do this we work closely with universities for graduate recruitment and with colleges for our apprentice learning experiences. We do this by getting involved; mentoring of undergraduates with our recent graduates as well as tutoring and guest lecturing at various universities. We also support post-graduation learning; not only formal technical and managerial learning but on design appreciation and social skills. We have an Engineering Club which looks at new and worthy projects within wider design environment, our aim is to acknowledge and learn from the experiences of others, both good and bad. We take our staff on study trips to European cities to enjoy the design and architecture of the city and promote goodwill within the team. This year the venue was Copenhagen, a wonderful city with a rich architectural history and an abundance of new architectural treats, but also with an amazing love of the bicycle! The sights include Nyhavn, the iconic pier, the world famous Little Mermaid, the Black Diamond, the 8 Tallet, the impressive oblique Hotel bella Sky, the Royal Danish Opera House or the Tietgen Student Residences. We would urge you to visit the city if you have not been but beware of the bicycles, which have right of way and don’t stop! For more information on Copenhagen try www.visitcopenhagen.com
cultural trips - Copenhagen | layout Woolgar Hunter Magazine | spring-summer 2016 |
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engineering through time
1969 1970
in 1971, the first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson, the creator of an nineteen email systemhundred on Arpanet, the technical seventy one foundation of the modern internet. Nowadays more than 200 billion emails* are exchanged every day.
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also in 1971, Woolgar Hunter was established.
*Radicati Group estimated the number of emails sent per day in February 2015 to be 205 Billion.
Woolgar Hunter LAYOUT magazine is printed on 100% recycled paper using renewable energy and supports the Woodland Trust foundation for trees preservation. LAYOUT magazine is a Woolgar Hunter publication. Concept, Design, Art Direction, Photographs and Illustrations by Samuel F. , Copyright © Woolgar Hunter 2016 - All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without Woolgar Hunter’s express consent. contact: info@woolgarhunter.com - www.woolgarhunter.com - +44 (0) 141 332 0471
In future editions of LAYOUT we will provide information on other sectors we currently work in and “Spotlight� on trends and topical issues, as well as having guest articles from our friends and colleagues in the industry. If you would like any further information or case studies on any of the projects mentioned or to provide feedback on this issue of LAYOUT, please contact us at info@ woolgarhunter.com
Woolgar Hunter 226 West George Street Glasgow G2 2PQ +44(0) 141 332 0471 info@woolgarhunter.com
civil + structural + geo-environmental engineering since 1971