Finalist |
||
 |
 |
Category: Projects £10-15m Name: Mark Gibson Company: Sir Robert McAlpine Project: Horsley Hill Campus, South Shields Contract: JCT 1998 with contractor's design |
On his first contract as project manager, 29-year-old Mark Gibson has delivered a hard-to-construct but stunning school, shaped as a figure of eight with two internal courtyards and clad in brick, render and rainscreen.
Working under a traditional contract, Mark nevertheless encouraged an integrated team, chairing weekly workshops to focus on producing and maintaining the correct flow of design information. Monthly progress meetings with the client and design team helped build relationships further.
Mark offered the talented design team construction advice and experience from past projects. He proposed two fundamental value-engineering solutions which brought the project significant savings.
First, he changed the original specification of a single-ply roof membrane to an A-rated material, which also helped gain more Breeam points. This was of real value as the council had set the designers an “excellent” Breeam target, which would be hard to achieve given the nature of the site.
Second, Mark reduced the amount of rainscreen cladding required by removing it from areas that were not visible from the roof. He also changed the rainscreen specification because of previous issues he had encountered with it.
Realising the seriousness of the complicated interface problems presented by the external envelope, Mark advised the designers to employ a specialist consultant to pre-assess the interface details for potential air leakage points. The move paid dividends when the building passed its Part L air test.
Project complexity was greatly increased by the large number of different end-users; the campus merged three existing primary schools, replaced a special needs school, and built a new children's centre and community facilities. Mark was unflagging in getting their buy-in. He chaired fortnightly meetings with the various head teachers, ran CITB workshops, encouraged the schoolchildren to decorate site hoardings and offered open days for children and parents to visit site.
The stunning structure that resulted is indebted to Mark's expertise, knowledge and flexibility.
