Transforming Buildings
The beauty of interior fit-out projects is the potential that can be realised through transformation. Taking a building and reimaging it into something completely new is what we achieve for our customers every day. At Watford County and Family Court, our fit out team took a former CAT A office and completely remodelled its interior to become a brand new judicial development on behalf of His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS).
Located in Watford town centre, the former Royalty House comprised 23,400 sq ft of office space across five storeys, which has undertaken substantial reconfiguration.
The project included a full strip-out, replacement of building services and a bespoke fit-out – a project that not only provides high quality judicial space for HMCTS but does so while achieving true value for money for the public purse. Unrecognisable from its former layout, the new Watford County & Family Court comprises:
- A new reception and security screening area
- Hearing rooms, judicial offices and workspaces
- New and refurbished lifts and stairs
- Replaced plant and services
- New welfare facilities
- New glazing
- Upgrades to building fabric
- Roofing upgrades and repairs
Ensuring value for money for the public sector
We’re proud to work across many facets of the public sector from hospitals to schools, the emergency services and everything in between. As such, we understand the importance of maximising budgets to ensure value for money at every step of a project. At Watford County and
Family Court, this commitment saw the project partners work together to agree a procurement strategy to demonstrate value for money.
In addition, we developed a comprehensive strategy to ensure the project brought positive social and economic benefits to the local area, with the following achieved:
- Six apprentices supported on site
- A local labourer trained as a hoist driver
- £49,287 spent with SMEs and social enterprises
- 99.2% of site waste redirected from landfill
Efforts to safeguard the wellbeing of our colleagues and those around us also included the following charitable and volunteer initiatives:
- Donations to local food and clothing banks
- Mental health and wellbeing facilities on site, including rest and leisure areas
- Suicide prevention talks delivered by Papyrus Suicide Prevention UK
Overcoming challenges through agility
Reconfiguring a building’s interior is never without challenge and being able to rethink design is a huge part of the fit-out puzzle. At Watford County and Family Court, the team needed to adapt the stage 3 MEP design to ensure the services fit within the existing building. Working with project partners, Faithful & Gould and Cundall, the team found a solution, removing walls to increase riser space, redesigning the air handling units and relocating the condensers.
This problem-solving approach was carefully managed with HMCTS and furthermore cultivated an agile work ethic, through which we were able to respond to arising project challenges. This included the redesign of the staircase to fit spatially, as well as a redesign to fan coil units to achieve the correct noise rating (NR) value.
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