星空传媒

<B><font size=鈥�+2鈥�>Key points</font></b>

<B>Project</b>

10,500 m² speculative headquarters office building

<B>Location</b>

Granton, north Edinburgh

<B>Regeneration feature</b>

Flagship development in ForthQuarter 28 ha mixed-use regeneration scheme

<B>Architectural feature</b>

Striking landmark building with fully glazed facades and solar-shading screens of horizontal aluminium tubing

<B>Green features</b>

• 鈥淓xcellent鈥� BREEAM rating for low environmental impact
• Chilled beams and displacement ventilation for low-energy environmental control

<B>Fit-out features</b>

• Superior call centre interior for 1150 staff raises productivity and improves staff retention
• High-density layout at 6 m² per person made acceptable by daylight, feeling of space and well-organised desks

<B>Procurement features</b>

• Construction management adopted for fast-track construction and design input from specialist contractors

<B>Cost features</b>

拢1930/尘² unit construction cost, including full tenant鈥檚 fit-out and external works, is good value for a high-specification office building

<B>Construction period</b>

Eighteen months, including tenant鈥檚 fit-out, to September 2003

<B><font size=鈥�+2鈥�>The client鈥檚 brief</font></b>

The client, SecondSite Property Holdings (formerly the property division of BG plc) set out to develop a speculative office block as the first building in its regeneration of a large former gasworks overlooking the Firth of Forth. SecondSite asked for a flexible, low-energy office building of 10,500 m² that could be partitioned and internally reconfigured to suit a range of tenants and uses, including a corporate headquarters. The first tenant, Scottish Gas, has fit out the building as its call centre and headquarters.

<b><font size=鈥�+2鈥�>Regeneration masterplan</font></b>

The entire former gasworks is being regenerated by SecondSite Property and masterplanned by Foster and Partners. The 28 ha area, now known as the ForthQuarter, overlooks the Firth of Forth at Granton in north Edinburgh. This regeneration scheme is one of three along the city鈥檚 waterfront.
At the ForthQuarter, a heavily polluted, toxic no-go area is being transformed into an attractive clean neighbourhood with utilities, public parks and transport infrastructure, including a new tram link to the city. A vibrant, mixed-use community is planned that will bring together 2000 homes, 70,000 m² of office accommodation, 10,500 m² of retail and leisure space and a college campus.

<B><font size=鈥�+2鈥�>Architectural design</font></b>

As designed by Foster and Partners, the four-storey Scottish Gas building has many of the qualities of both a public building and a corporate headquarters. The result aims to combine an efficient, functional workplace accommodating a large number of employees at high density, and an inspiring work environment which conveys a message of valuing the workforce and encouraging loyalty, teamwork and productivity.
<B>Entrance</b>

The entrance is on the south frontage, where a deep recess is lined on either side by blue glass laid over concrete. The shiny, vivid blue glass draws employees in from a new public plaza in front of the building and exudes an atmosphere of elegance and formality as they arrive for work. A lofty entrance hall leads into an atrium capped by a white glass lantern. Diffused daylight spreads through this lantern into the space below, accentuating the airy volume.
<B>Ground floor</b>

The ground floor accommodates meeting rooms, administration, IT, occupational health and a 220-seat staff restaurant opening into the atrium. As this is the first completed building on the site and there is, as yet, little activity in the area, good staff facilities are essential, so a shop and vending and cash machines have been provided. Lifts and cantilevered staircases take staff up to the three call-centre floors, which are arranged as open-plan workspaces on either side of the atrium and command views through the building.
<B>Exterior</b>

The exterior of the building announces itself as a striking local landmark. Constructed on a concrete frame, the fully glazed facades are surrounded on all four sides by banks of silvery sun-screens.
Made from specially manufactured elliptical aluminium tubing, the sun-screens run in horizontal lines and are suspended from flat vertical bars that drop from the roof to the foot of the building. As well as providing shade, the sun-screens give strong visual definition to the architecture. They sit proud of the glass facades, but run straight across the entrance recess, so that they form a rectangular veil over the irregular U-shaped building enclosure. The spacing between the horizontal tubes is not uniform: the lines loosen up on each floor at eye level so as not to impede views, and are grouped closer together where floors and ceilings occur. In all, some 8 km of tubing were used to form the shading system.

<B><font size=鈥�+2鈥�>Procurement and cost control</font></b>

The choice of procurement route was strongly influenced by pre-letting the building to Scottish Gas, which wanted to move in early. The requirement for accelerated completion emerged early in the design stage, at RIBA stage C, and was a major factor in the decision
to adopt construction management procurement. Following the appointment of the construction manager in June 2001, work commenced on site in March 2002.
Specialist contractors were involved at an early stage, also as a
result of using construction management. The project features a number of innovations and this early input was important in devising high-quality, cost-effective solutions.
A good example of this involved the passive chilled beams,
which were adopted in place of conventional four-pipe fan coil
air-conditioning. In this case, the specialist contractor was required
to meet institutional performance standards, to integrate the system with the office lighting installation, to accommodate future office partitioning requirements and to achieve very low noise levels. Installation costs also had to be kept low. Typically, passive chilled beams have higher initial capital cost than fan coils, often in the region of an extra 拢50-60/m² of net internal floor area, though this reduces to an extra 拢10-20/m² once savings on ceilings are taken into account. Although such a solution is still marginally more expensive, savings can be made in running and maintenance costs.
The tenant鈥檚 fit-out was rolled together with the landlord鈥檚 fit-out as part of the main construction management contract, and this enabled the tenant to move in several months early. The developer paid trade contractors for both tenant鈥檚 and landlord鈥檚 fit-outs and was later reimbursed by the tenant, which had formerly been part of the
same group.
The predicted final account costs, including tenant fit out and external works, are in the order of 拢1930/尘²