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© Steve Menary
© Steve Menary
tender in spring 2010 and in July that year Kier was confirmed as having beaten a number of other contractors, including the UK arm of French giant VINCI and local outfit Warings, to the job. In May 2011, an exhibition of the draft plans was held at the
Artisan Cafe on Guildhall Square but one obstacle remained: planning permission. Final planning permission was secured at the start of October
2010. Hoardings went up around the site, which includes the city’s magistrates’ courts and adjoins the civic centre in the heart of Southampton with space at a premium. To help Kier, the Havelock Spur Road was closed on October
4 to provide a construction compound and the road will stay closed until the construction work is finished, which is expected in April 2012. The biggest obstacle for the construction team has been in
attaching the new-build element to the Grade II listed building. Designed by E Berry Webber, the original building was
erected in 1933 with a Portland Stone façade with an in situ con- crete rib and hollow block floors on a steel frame with no cavity, which caused issues. Named after the place where the problem was first discovered,
Regent’s Street syndrome was rife with up to 20mm of rust on the steel structure, in places. Gifford associate Stephen Forder says: “Although this appears an inherent design fault, it could be argued that having already achieved a design life of over 70 years, the original construction technique was more than adequate. Conservation of the building was achieved in a number of ways ranging from replacement of the roof finishes to undertaking steelwork and stonework repairs.” Working closely with the council’s conservation team and
English Heritage, Gifford developed a strategy of window sampling and opening up and steel and stonework repairs to overcome this. Kier project manager Jon James explains: “We had to take all continued overleaf
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