Brighton & Hove Bus Company depot, Brighton

WHAT: Work on the Brighton & Hove Bus Company depot in Lewes Road involved knocking down a single-storey building and replacing it with a two-storey building on the same footprint.

It included a new training and administrative centre that had to satisfy the architectural panel of the local authority planning department.

The Brighton & Hove Bus Company's parent the Go-Ahead group operates bus services across the UK, including London and along the south coast. The depot had to include office facilities, a driver training school and a canteen, and work had to be done to a limited budget while the bus depot remained fully operational.

HOW MUCH: £1m

WHEN: Work started in July 2005 and was completed in February 2006

CONTRACT: JCT Design & Build 98

DESIGN TEAM: Architect, planning consultant, interior designer and structural engineer: Penson Group, QS: Giles Gibbons Associates, building services consultants: GDM, main contractor: Coupe Construction, operating company: Brighton & Hove Bus & Coach Company, parent company: Go-Ahead Group

PROJECT TEAM VIEW: "When we were taking the pictures a busload of kids stopped at the traffic lights outside and they yelled at the photographer and I, asking what the building is. I jokingly said, ‘Well, it's a nightclub' and then the photographer said, ‘No, it's an office building'. They all shouted, ‘No, it's a time machine'.

The real crux of the project is that the building we demolished was actually quite a nice, respected building in Brighton. It was a feature building so when we came along and said, ‘Look, we want to knock it down and build a new building' the planners said, ‘Well, you've got to make something special.'

At the same time the client was on the other side of the fence saying, ‘We need something cheap and cheerful' and gave me a budget of £100/ft2 including the whole thing lock, stock and barrel. That equates to a value of approximately £80-85/ft2 which is tight. For a while it was a case of, ‘Christ, this thing's never going to get off the ground.'

People either love or hate the thing but it's growing on people day by day." - Lee Penson, CEO, Penson Group

Source

QS News