| Access to Services Centre, Town
Hall Municipal Buildings (Ground Floor)
With a budget of £150M to maintain the services required by
a resident population of 142,283 (2001 Census), Blackpool Borough
Council is comparable in size to a multi-national company.
As with any business, customer service and accessibility are both
vital ingredients in ensuring customer satisfaction. With this in
mind, Blackpool Borough Council took the decision to modernise and
improve its service delivery through the refurbishment of the Access
to Services centre, established within the Town Hall Municipal Buildings.
The new centre would include a large
reception with feature desk, a greeter area, an information point
with large LCD screens, a cashiers area, interview rooms and back
offices.
The design of the new Access to Services centre would embrace the
latest ‘access to all’ principals providing a light,
airy and welcoming facility. The open plan design would meet new
legal requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act and cater
for citizens with special needs such as the elderly and disabled
in addition to parents with children in prams.
The project would be procured and managed
through the partnership principals set out in PPC2000, thus providing
the added value necessary to make best use of the available budget
and existing services.
The
existing site would be divided into four areas with the development
of each area leading on so that the public could still use the facility
with the minimum of disruption.
T. Jolly Services would undertake an initial survey of the Town
Hall Municipal Buildings in September 2003, to establish the design
of the existing building services and how best to reuse them. In
order to prevent excessive damage being caused to the building fabric
that would remain on show until the final phase, such as the fixed
panel ceilings, the survey would be carried out in a non-intrusive
way.
Initial building work would commence on site in December 2003 with
the strip out and demolition of existing ceilings and partition
walls. The new design for the mechanical services would be completed
by November 2003 in time for the first phase of the services refurbishment
to commence in January 2004.
T. Jolly’s would be responsible
for the installation of the LPHW heating, domestic hot and cold
water, ventilation, air conditioning, sprinkler system and BMS controls.
An additional disabled toilet would also be created complete with
new sanitaryware, drainage and domestic hot and cold water supply.
The project would be completed in October
2004.
In order to reduce the effects of condensation,
the existing perimeter supply air heating system, that utilised
LPHW zone heater coils, was removed and replaced by a new low level
LPHW trench heating system throughout the main glazed areas. Additional
radiators were provided in the main reception area (feature radiator)
and disabled toilet and two new air curtains were installed above
the main entrance door and reception door, both retaining the original
LPHW supply.
Two existing split type air conditioning
cassettes serving the reception area and three LPHW fan coil units
were decommissioned and replaced with an environmentally and technologically
advanced Mitsubishi VRV system. The new system consisting of seven
ceiling cassettes and one ducted unit provides the back offices,
interview rooms and public spaces with both additional heating in
winter and cooling in summer. An additional split system was installed
in the IT room enabling it to call for cooling whilst the surrounding
areas served by the VRV can call for heating.
The existing supply air handling unit
located in the basement that previously supplied the perimeter heating
was re-used to supply tempered air to the public/office areas through
new ductwork and ceiling supply diffusers.
The existing extract air handling unit
located in the basement that previously extracted air from the office
areas was re-used to extract stale air from both the office and
public areas. This was supplemented by a Nuaire in-line fan that
discharges extracted air from the reception area via a roof mounted
cowl and by a Nuaire in-line ‘shunt’ fan that extracts
air from the interview rooms into the main air handling unit.
The existing sprinkler system was removed
back to the sprinkler mains and a new system was installed.
Thanks to the success of the redevelopment
project and the excellent working relationship between the partnership
team members, the same team has been retained to undertake £120k
of further works for Blackpool Borough Council. This includes the
redevelopment of various areas across three floors of the Town Hall
and the whole of the first floor office area of the Town Hall Municipal
Buildings.For further information on this case study or to enquire
about Partnership Projects or M&E services installations, please
contact: joe-turner@tjolly.co.uk
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