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16 December 2002
Bovis Lend Lease Wins Five-Year Broadcasting House Rebuild
Bovis Lend Lease has been appointed construction manager for the £252 million refurbishment of the BBC’s Broadcasting House and the redevelopment of neighbouring buildings in London’s West End, to create the world’s largest live news centre.
Standing in Portland Place, close to the political and commercial heart of Britain, Broadcasting House will become the headquarters and production hub for all the BBC’s radio, news and World Service programmes.
Scheduled for completion in 2008, the combined development will provide 77,400 square metres of flexible accommodation for all the studios, offices, production and support services needed to meet the Corporation’s long-term radio and news programming schedules for the 21st century.
The first phase of the five-year project involves a complete internal and external refurbishment and refit of the 16,600 square metre Grade 2* listed Broadcasting House, which was built in 1932. Other works in this phase include the demolition of four adjoining properties to accommodate two new office buildings.
The larger of these new buildings will provide 54,000 square metres of studio and office accommodation spread over eight floors and three basement levels and the other will be a five-storey 6,800 square metre structure, also with three basement levels.
These basement levels, excavated to within three metres of the Victoria Line, will form the core of a live radio newsroom, surrounded by glass walled viewing galleries with a tower of five glass meeting rooms formed in the atrium of the new structure.As well as the physical challenges of construction, the project involves a complex and large scale fit out requiring many different skills and resources to install the technical equipment needed for programme making and broadcasting.
Bovis Lend Lease will also be expected to maintain all the necessary services and systems needed by the Corporation to continue broadcasting from the site throughout the construction programme.
Enabling works are already underway at Broadcasting House and demolition of Egton House begins in January 2003. The first phase is due for completion in 2005 and work will start then on demolition of the other two buildings.
Colin Small is heading the Bovis Lend Lease project team. A divisional director with 32 years experience with the company, he sees the Broadcasting House scheme as the most exciting and interesting as well as certainly the most complex challenge of his career.
“It’s a job that has everything – careful restoration of a listed building, large scale demolition and excavation in a sensitive situation with the Tube line running beneath the site, new building works, a complicated technical fitout and the need to maintain broadcasting continuity throughout.
“The fact that the duration of the contract is five years gives a good idea of just how complicated it is. By comparison, we completed the giant Bluewater shopping centre in Kent in three years.”
Project team
Client: BBC
Construction manager: Bovis Lend Lease
Architect: MacCormac, Jamieson, Prichard
Structural engineer: Whitby Bird & Partners
Mechanical & electrical engineer: Faber Maunsell
Cost consultant: Currie & Brown
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