Gold Medal Winner |
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Category: Projects £4-7m Name: Simon Ramage ICIOB Company: Willmott Dixon Construction Project: East Berkshire College, Windsor Contract: JCT 1998 |
With the client making clear that it wanted its scheme on time, on budget and with an enhanced spec, Simon Ramage had little room for manoeuvre. What must make his successful delivery of this project a matter for even greater satisfaction is that the college teaches the entire construction curriculum. The lecturers as well as the students all learned from Simon, who gave talks on the project and tours of the site, explaining the issues as they went along.
And the issues were substantial. The project required the demolition of, among other buildings (all of which overhung Windsor's high street), half a semi-detached house, renovating the party wall as a new external wall. The college and the high street businesses all remained live during this time, and Simon successfully managed the risk through scaffold protection and hand demolition.
The project had taken three years to get through planning, and Simon worked hard to draw the sting from opposition. He made sure that cars, windows and shopfronts were washed after the demolition works, that a resident's garage was repaired and trees pruned for a local church as goodwill gestures.
But the programme was extremely tight. The demolition phase took 12 weeks, leaving just 45 for construction, and Simon showed great versatility in juggling the sequencing to keep the project on schedule.
When it became apparent that the start of the crucial steel frame erection would be delayed by eight days because of the lack of construction design information, Simon junked the planned sequencing to haul the lost time back. Instead of building one floor after another, he put up the steel frame in four foundation-to-roof sections, laying the precast floor planks as he went and setting the follow-on trades to work four weeks earlier than anticipated.
And by allowing early access to the top three floors for the fit-out contractors, Simon ensured they could complete in time for the college to open its facility for the new academic term. This in turn left the client feeling comfortable enough to instruct a large and late variation to the ground-floor works.
The increased value of the final contract, along with purposeful value engineering, allowed Simon to turn the expected loss on the project (a competitively won tender that relied on tender estimates and quotations) into a small but very welcome profit.
