Winner Gold Award: Jeremy Eavis FCIOB, Mace
Project: The Marshall Building, London School of Economics
Scope: New building at the university’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields site
Client: London School of Economics
Form of contract: GC Works (with LSE Amendments)
Value: £92.4m
This exceptional building for the London School of Economics (LSE) required exceptional management to deliver it. Step forward Jeremy Eavis, a Mace project director with a 41-year career in construction to draw on.
The Marshall Building is home to several departments, with a sports hall in the basement, a ground floor Great Hall, two teaching floors with six lecture theatres and seven office levels including landscaped terraces.
Its most striking element is its six internal concrete trees, 6.5m tall with 28 branches, which form the vaults of the ceiling in the Great Hall. Eavis persuaded the client to fund a prototype of the post-tensioned tree beams before the contract was signed, allowing any issues to be ironed out.
Other finalists
Chris Baker MCIOB Willmott Dixon, City Campus Manchester
Rhys Lewis BAM Construction, Abbey Primary School
Darran Snarr Kier Construction, Sunningdale SEND School
Gavin Ward MCIOB McAvoy Group, Merstham Park School
Andrew Weller Kier Construction, Elmgrove Primary School
The facade, with its multi-layered precast panels, also came under early scrutiny. As well as organising prototype panels, Eavis proposed the recommended insulation be replaced with a non-combustible product in a rainscreen, helping with programming and fire safety. He also engineered programme and cost savings by taking the helical staircase off the critical path.
The prototypes together with early completion of three offices and one lecture theatre meant zero defects and fewer than 20 minor snags at practical completion.
Winner Silver Award: Martin Standley, Sewell Construction
Project: Broadacre Primary School
Scope: New primary school building to replace existing one and extend pupil places
Client: Hull City Council/Hull Esteem Consortium
Form of contract: Design and build
Value: £8.2m
The new Broadacre Primary School building has boosted the school’s capacity by 210 places to 630 and includes a 52-place nursery and a 10-place space for children with autism spectrum condition (ASC), the first of its kind in Hull.
In delivering Broadacre Primary School, Martin Standley set out to make the project a learning experience for all those involved. Before starting on site, he researched ASC with a University of Hull professor and made autism awareness part of every site induction. The aim was to communicate that this project was about more than just a building.
Standley’s planning and management kept the project on track. With limited access in the early stages of the programme and a tight programme, Standley resequenced some of the works. And he devised a solution to get parts of the building watertight earlier to allow fit-out to begin while external blockwork was still progressing.
