About the Project

Everards Printworks, Bristol

In his first project manager role, Patrick Coyle has taken the contractor’s reputation with a repeat client to an even higher level with the redevelopment of three listed buildings/facades and eight interconnected office blocks on a city centre site.  

With so many blocks, all at different heights, scattered across the site, a tower crane was simply not practical. Instead, Patrick installed two hoists and removed the demolition material via drop zones and chutes. At risk of losing a number of bedrooms in the hotel after a neighbour refused to allow scaffold built near his property, he designed a cantilevered scaffold to keep all of them.  

Faced with the non-alignment of the waffle floor slabs complicating the standardisation of risers and bedrooms, he led a redesign. It halved the number of waffle cut-outs, service diversions and riser extensions that would otherwise have been needed.  

Repeatedly encountering time-consuming surprises such as hidden staircases, reinforced concrete upstands and large downstand beams, he used his own skills and those of the professional team to stay on programme and on budget. 

His introduction of air-source heat pumps helped reduce reliance on gas as a primary fuel and drove the scheme up the sustainability curve. Similarly, he steered the design of the main plant room so that it can join the future district heating network planned in the city.