Name: Chris O'Dowd
Employer: Hill Partnerships Ltd
Project: Gunpowder Mill, Waltham Abbey
Contract: PPC 2000
‘Challenging’ doesn’t begin to describe Chris O’Dowd’s project.
Sitting between two rivers and a canal, with dragonfly corridors, a heronry and badger setts, the site hosted a SSSI. Keeping the many residential neighbours happy was an all-but impossible task, but Chris’s calm, respectfulness and cheerfulness gradually brought them onside.
Then there was the build itself. To limit costs, the owner-developer, Chris’s employer, decided to progress and procure in parallel with detailed design development. Chris constantly sought pragmatic solutions and encouraged innovation and problem-solving in the team to keep it all on track.
With three derelict historic buildings to convert into offices and a linked three-storey new-build to progress, Chris had to maintain multiple tight programmes and timescales, running them consecutively and in tandem. It required huge concentration and multiple focus.
For an example of the sheer complexity of what Chris had to manage and dovetail, consider his construction of a semi-basement in one of the existing buildings to allow for the insertion of two new floors. The excavation was in waterlogged ground requiring 24-hour pumping of 250,000 litres of water a day. And it took place alongside the formation of new foundations, the underpinning of the existing foundations, and the cutting and lengthening of the existing steel columns. And as he was keeping control of all this he even found time to come up with a technical solution to the water levels in the basement in the form of robust, cost-effective and fast-to-install bentonite matting.
Chris successfully handed over this complex multi-stranded project by the immovable completion date. He constantly added value on a budget that was continually and heavily scrutinised. And he delivered an almost museum-like quality.
Value: £6.8m