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Category: Projects £7-10m Name: Fara Abbaspour Company: HBG Construction Project: Tatchbury Nursing Home, Hampshire Contract: JCT 1998 Local Authority |
Fara Abbaspour has left his mark on Hampshire in more ways than one. Not only did he deliver a new-build nursing home ahead of schedule and below budget, but a major cost-saving innovation in internal wall construction he instigated in the project impressed the client so much it has ported the technique to its school building programme.
Having previously built another nursing home at Andover for the council, Fara was well versed in what was wanted and how to go about delivering it most efficiently. As a result, his input on buildability and costs in the preconstruction phase resulted in substantial cost and programme savings.
One of Fara's most important innovations was for the foundation and dry wall construction. The initial consultant designs specified very deep strip footings and suspended ground floor slabs to deal with the ground issues created by the mature trees on the site. However, Fara proposed a piled solution with a simply constructed raft slab. His alternative was £40,000 cheaper and took two weeks off the programme.
As a result, Fara was able to incorporate the soft furnishing fit-out into the construction phase of the programme, and still complete in time. The council had its facility up and running in the week following practical completion.
Fara also successfully researched more economical acoustic plaster boarding. With insulation performance substantiated by site testing, the system generated savings of £37,000 for the project. The council has since rolled out this the innovation in its schools programme, with an anticipated saving of £35,000 per school.
Not surprisingly, Fara's accomplishments won this project the highest ever customer satisfaction scores that HBG has ever received. In his pursuit of programme, budget and quality, Fara has confounded the perception of construction as a seesaw where success in one area guarantees defeat in another, and captured all three.
