Finalist |
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Category: Projects £10-15m Name: Jason Newbold Company: Rydon Construction Project: St Margaret's Hospital, Epping Contract: PFI |
Thrown in at the deep end with not only his first major contract as the lead manager but also his first PFI project, Jason Newbold performed like a veteran, bringing an amazing range of technical and buildability initiatives to admirable fruition.
Jason's creativity and knowledge transfer were awesome in providing practical solutions to design problems.
For example, the building was being designed for natural ventilation but the client held out for a maximum temperature range, which meant putting in cooling systems that didn't figure in the original budget and had no obvious location in the building. Jason found the solution on the roof (part of which was a radius) by substituting the intended tailor-made tapered aluminium sheets with a cheaper-to-build concrete structure that would form a floor for (and create the budget to finance) the cooling plant.
He then solved the problematic second-floor ribbon windows (which could not physically support the upper level of brickwork) by negotiating with the window supplier to change the whole elevation to Spandrex glass panels. It was at first sight a costly solution, but one that Jason's negotiating skills brought in within budget.
He saved £60,000 by dispensing with floor screeds and working exclusively in concrete. And by building the structure's inner blockwork before the brickwork envelope, he gained 10 weeks on the programme by advancing the ability to work inside.
Even more impressive than these feats of value engineering was Jason's ability to solve a major change in the brief during the development programme that involved placing above every bed a ceiling hoist capable of lifting 700lbs. On the lower floors, reinforcing the suspended floor slab to take the point loads was easy enough, but the top floor ceiling was a purlin-supported aluminium roof. Building a steel framework across it to take the weight of the hoist points would have been immensely costly.
But Jason remembered a job where an air conditioning plant inside a building had been suspended from a similar roof by the replacement of the purlins with a structural steel roof liner which was corrugated to the same depth as the purlins. A similar strategy (with a doubled roof liner bolted to the building) paid off here, forming a structure that met the hoists' load-bearing requirement. The total additional cost to meet this major client request was just £2,800.
