Name: Simon Chapman
Employer: John Sisk & Son Ltd
Project: 10 Weymouth Street, London
Contract: JCT 2005
New construction materials are the designer’s dream but the construction manager’s nightmare. But for Simon Chapman’s superb management, the bespoke brass facade on this complex project could easily have scuppered it.
Right from the start, Simon took a strong line on risk, assessing the team’s collective skills and identifying where third-party expertise needed to be brought in. Foreseeing the weathertightness implications of the brass cladding, he suggested separating the installation of the brass panels from the weatherproofing layer. It was a brilliant piece of risk and design management that was the key reason for the project completing on time.
He also put in a huge amount of design co-ordination and installation control to avoid contamination of the panels, which would result in irregular patination. But towards the end of the project the worst happened, with streaking caused by airborne contaminants appearing on the raw brass rainscreen. Simon acted fast to identify the cause and resolve the issue. Within a week the necessary research was completed and metals experts and cleaning professionals assembled. The resulting solution got the brass clean without affecting its natural patination.
Simon constantly offered the client and the design team options to resolve problems rather than sit back and wait for them to develop. So when he found workmanship-related issues with the windows, he swallowed hard and took the fateful decision to stop their installation until he found out why it was going wrong. It endangered the programme but permitted research and testing that identified the issues as a manufacturing problem that was quickly corrected. The time was made up, and the quality was delivered.
Value: £9.6m