星空传媒

Renowned for its historical and arts connections, Liverpool is making a bold bid for the title of European Capital of Culture 2008. But east of the city centre, a different kind of culture is ensuring that the area will continue to thrive in the future.

A new 拢23 million Biosciences Centre coming to completion at Liverpool University will regenerate the existing facilities and provide rentable research and laboratory space.

The four-storey centre curves out from the base of an existing life sciences building, which is being reduced from ten to four-storeys in the redevelopment. The centre comprises four interconnecting blocks of equal size and shape. Walking through from end to end there are no obvious splits between the blocks, they are distinguished only by their different layouts and uses.

Blocks are labelled A-D. A and C are virtually identical in layout and comprise of wide, open laboratories on the front of the building and offices on the rear, separated by a central service riser that runs the width of the blocks. Block B has smaller, specialist areas such as plant growth and cold rooms. Block D is rentable space that can be used for laboratories or offices.

The new centre was a fast track project with 拢7.5 million of m&e services installed in just 36 weeks. As well as close co-ordination between the construction teams and extensive use of prefabrication to meet the tight deadlines, the m&e contractor Emcor Drake & Scull's programme involved working in all areas of the building simultaneously.

Starting the process
Emcor became involved in the project at the design stage. The m&e contract was awarded by competitive tender, with Emcor selected by main contractor HBG Construction.

The construction process was in four stages: enabling works; construction of the new centre; provision for an aquarium and insectaries; and the part-demolition and refurbishment of the existing building. The enabling works began on site in March 2001. This involved re-routing hv cables that ran from other university buildings directly through the new construction site, and was carried out as the groundworks for the centre began.

Getting Emcor involved at this early stage meant that the contractor's knowledge could be utilised in the building design to ensure that the scheme satisfied client needs and budget. Emcor project team leader Mike Street explains: "We brought in various ideas on how we could change things to save money."

This value engineering process led to mccbs being used on the main switchboard instead of fuse switches, producing savings of around 20%. The use of tagged, galvanised cable trays instead of colour-coded painted versions, saved about 40% on time; further reductions included a 20% labour saving by using press fit Mannesman pipework.

Construction of the centre began in January 2002, with a nine-month schedule. One of the major advantages for this fast-track scheme was that HBG and Emcor had just completed a project at the Liverpool Museum together. A final handover date at the museum of February 2002 meant that the workforce there could move directly onto the Biosciences Centre. "The team is the same as was at the Liverpool Museum, everybody that was on that job came here," confirms Street. This gave several advantages: "With the supervision and operatives being part of the original team, they knew the requirements of the management immediately and there was no learning process," he explains. Street estimates that only two weeks were needed to learn about the new project compared to the average six-week initial learning period and that by keeping the team together a 20% smaller workforce could be used. "One of the big reasons for this was as they started to move the guys from the museum to this job in September, we had time at the front-end of the job to develop how we were going to do it," Street says.

This philosophy extended to subcontractors, with several carrying on to the biosciences scheme.

Serving science
In order to complete the installation within the timescales, logistics and close co-ordination between the different teams were essential.

Installation of the floors was directly followed by that of the ceiling and the benches. "The timing was very critical to get all the teams in at the staged times to enable everybody else in to do their work," Street stresses.

The programme was broken down into three week cycles, with the first, second and final fix for each floor being scheduled in consultation with HBG and the other project contractors. This rolling programme resulted in Emcor staff working throughout all areas of the centre simultaneously at different stages of installation.

In order to maintain the three week schedules, individual workers carried out the same tasks throughout the centre, reducing any learning periods. "This worked far better than trying to split the building with a project manager or engineer for each block," assures Street.

Prefabrication also played a large part in maintaining the schedules on site.

All mechanical plant was brought to site skid-mounted and the ventilation stacks for the fume cupboards were mounted onto their steel frame in front of the new building by Emcor in the drive to reduce installation time.

The laboratory benches were another closely-controlled area: "An awful lot of planning went into this process," confirms Street. Using prefabrication for the benches was suggested at the pre-planning stage by Emcor. "We noticed ways and means of getting more work done," explains Street. The idea was to complete the dado trunking around the laboratory walls and as much of the bench connections as possible off site, so that after the benches were installed only final connections were needed.

Close co-ordination with the bench contractor saw them arrive with dado trunking and pedestal boxes containing data and power attached and ready for connection. This saved a lot of on-site time and Street attributes it to enabling Emcor to complete on site at virtually the same time as the other contractors. This was possible by getting Emcor involved at the design stage. As Street says, if this system hadn't been used: "We'd have been at the tail-end connecting."

The Biosciences Centre was completed on 20 October and is now filling with students. The Life Sciences building's redevelopment is due for completion in August, ready for a new spurt of growth for the University.