Meet the Finalists

2024 | Education

Chris Baker MCIOB
Willmott Dixon

Construction of four-storey academic block, completed in 133 weeks.

The simple measure of Chris Baker’s success is this: he so impressed that Willmott Dixon was awarded the £25m second phase of this scheme by a client that had never before offered a contractor repeat business.

About the Project

City Campus, Manchester

Construction of four-storey academic block, completed in 133 weeks.

The simple measure of Chris Baker’s success is this: he so impressed that Willmott Dixon was awarded the £25m second phase of this scheme by a client that had never before offered a contractor repeat business.

Chris did not so much put himself in his customer’s shoes as wear them 24/7. To get the design vision right for the jewel-box theatre centrepiece, he had a mock-up made for the client – who promptly hated the jointing and lapping of the originally specified solution. Chris led an innovative replacement, creating a seamless finish that delighted the client.

By revisiting the construction methodology and technical solutions, he was able to do the same thing in a more cost-efficient if harder-to-deliver way. It was the price of retaining the feel of the original design while taking out a £7m budget excess.

He brought the building height down to under 18m to save on otherwise onerous fire protection requirements. He changed the precast structural stair cores to steel framing and precast flights, and cut back the super-expensive 38m-long glulam beams in the atrium to more affordable 18m lengths.

And when a modelling error by the M&E engineers resulted in holes too small for the fire batt installation, Chris progressed works out of sequence while leveraging his relationship with the drylining contractor to bring in more people to resolve the issue within the contract programme.

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