We successfully delivered the structural reconfiguration of 120 Oxford Street, a pair of 1920’s buildings in the world-famous shopping district.

This involved decommissioning and stripping out the existing Plaza shopping centre, followed by extensive temporary works to enable the ground and first floor slabs to be demolished without affecting the five occupied floors above.

Following demolition, our team installed structural steel and floor slabs, creating a reconfigured shell for new retail tenants. Senior site engineers developed a temporary support scheme and demolition methodology that saved a significant amount of money for the Client and gave them better programme certainty. By enhancing the temporary bracing to larger sections and reducing the total number of braces, the team could improve access to the structure enough to use hydraulic munching equipment to demolish areas of the building from below rather than saw cutting from above.

Stakeholder management

As well as bringing cost and time advantages, this reduced noise and vibration in the building, improving safety on the project and reducing disruption to several sensitive neighbours within the building, including the Arcadia Group’s head offices directly above them, the project team’s coordination and communication with all stakeholders throughout was key to its successful delivery.

A collaborative approach

Whilst this was a traditional JCT form of contract, where method and value engineering of the method is the preserve of the main contractor, we were clear that savings would be shared. By using such open methods the client achieved a saving, clear stakeholder management (the neighbours’ experiences during the test formed part of the evaluation criteria) and significant programme de-risking ensuring they were able to adopt a strong delivery position with their incoming flagship tenant.

Award winning

Good project planning payed off for us on the award-winning construction project at 120 Oxford Street in London. The excellent programme and client management paid dividends. Joseph McNeil was Project Manager and early in the project, he identified discrepancies between the initial contracted schedule of work set by the client and the requirements from the incoming tenants. Thanks to his transparent and collaborative approach, he successfully resolved the situation for all parties, which he now sees as a personal highlight.

Joseph McNeil not only won Gold in his category at the Construction Manager of the Year awards 2019 but walked away with the overall title too.

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