HEAD OFFICE REFURBISHMENT

When Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company, headquartered in Reading, faced the prospect of outgrowing their landmark circular building on the river due to expanding employee numbers and a lack of collaborative meeting spaces, they turned to Kevin and his team for creative solutions.

The project had specific requirement’s to reflect the existing architecture and company branding in the new design and make better use of daylight.

Finally, and most importantly, Thames Water took advantage of our occupied space churn model (refurbishment of occupied office space whilst in situ) to deliver the works over a fixed 22 week program with extended out of hours working which allowed minimal disruption to the business.

We increased headcount to enable Thames Water to house 380 additional staff, taking the overall building count to in excess of 1100 and, at the same time, create over 650 further meeting spaces without the need to move to larger premises.

124 workstations were accommodated per wing with two formal meeting spaces to each of nine operational wings, and further meeting spaces allowed in the break out areas. Each wing now has break‐out areas located at the entrance and end of wings with self-contained meeting pods, and a mix of breakout furniture to seat in excess of 50 people per wing. Each wing also has Project Areas incorporating writeable wall surfaces, standing meeting units and space to display plans and programmes.

One complete wing was turned into a meeting room suite – complete with frameless glazing and portholes to maximise light and integrate with intelligent AV solutions to provide an imaginative, conducive meeting experience.

Aside from updating the working environment, improving storage and integrating the corporate brand into the office landscape, Thames Water achieved a significant cost saving by conducting the entire operation using our occupied space churn model, thus negating the need to pay rent and relocation fees on a nearby site (to act as a decant space) while the work was being carried out with minimal loss of productivity during the works.