About the Project

Gloucestershire Constabulary Operations Centre, Cheltenham

Construction of two-storey office block, dog kennels and stables, completed in 62 weeks.

With what had been a £22m scheme value-engineered down to £11m before he arrived, Alex Stace moved rapidly to rescue what would have been a problematic envelope installation. By ditching the blockwork and building the cladding off a steel-framing system, eliminating the need for scaffold, he advanced the works by eight weeks, generated cost savings and achieved watertightness faster.

He had an innovative solution to the problem of the external safety nets (for the installation of a badly delayed top sheet on a roof with a large overhang) getting in the way of the walls’ steel-framing system. By attaching the nets to rock climbing anchors fixed to a different position on the steel, he ensured no ropes were left protruding through the external envelope.

On a sloping site with impermeable ground, Alex designed out the leak risk at the ground-floor slab edge by building a 150mm concrete upstand along the building perimeter, with channel drains at high-risk locations. Likewise, with the client needing to install radio antennas after handover, he pre-installed sealed hockey stick penetrations in the envelope.

Alex was successful because he considered everything. And that included such specialist aspects as testing the level of grit in the kennels’ resin flooring to ensure it wouldn’t hurt the dogs’ paws, and setting up the fire alarm system in the stable so as not to spook the horses when it sounded.