Holiday Inn Express
Oxford Road, Manchester
Client: Manchester Property Holdings
Main Contractor: Russells Construction
Contact: Phil Jay, major projects director
Value: £9m
Schedule: Demolition of existing building January 2009
Completion due Spring, 2010
Brief: Construction of 147-bed, 11-storey, wedge-shaped hotel with basement
restaurant / leisure facilities. Finished in black brick, the Oxford Rd façade
will be glazed. The building incorporates a ground floor retail SPAR unit.
Design/ Management team:
Planning architect: Stephenson Bell
Design architect: McCormick Architecture
Structural Engineer: Brazier Holt
Client project manager: Edmond Shipway.
Scope of works:
Construction using deep piling technique, pre-cast concrete slabs,
finished with black facing brick as per planning requirements.
Description:
This site is just over 500 m sq and sits directly on the edge of
the River Medlock. This multi-storey project is in a high profile
location on Oxford Road, one of the main thoroughfares of
Manchester city centre. The project has required the demolition of
the existing building the relocation of the tenant retail unit,
and the closure of Hulme Street during the build. The complexities
of the site require innovative solutions, careful scheduling of
deliveries taking into account the restrictive access, and liaison
with external bodies such as the Environment Agency. Various
measures have been put in place to reduce impact on the river from
the demolition stage to construction (see mast climbing gantry).
History of the site:
The offices at 4 Oxford Road were originally occupied by the Daily Herald newspaper which moved to the building in 1929. The Herald itself relaunched in 1964 as The Sun and shared the building with The People and Melody Maker Magazine (later NME).
From the 1960s to 2009 the building was used as office space with a retail unit on the ground floor. The existing tenant, Spar since the mid 1990s, has been relocated to a neighbouring building during the works but is due to return to the approx 800 sq m store upon completion.
BREEAM / Considerate Contractors:
Russells has fulfilled the criteria to achieve a "very good" Considerate Contractors rating through a range of measures including open communication with neighbours, carefully scheduled deliveries, waste and recycling schemes on site (including the firm's first ever on-site wormery).
The project has also secured a Very Good BREEAM rating.
Problems and Solutions:
Electricity Sub Station
United Utilities is due to move the substation however timing issues meant
Russells commenced building around the existing structure (to ensure the build
Programme is not delayed). The existing brick structure sits at the narrow Hulme
Street-end of the scheme. Concrete columns have been erected over the structure to
enable work to continue above it.
Pre-cast Concrete Walls
Minimises waste on site, minimal disruption to neighbours provides project manager
with tighter control over the build schedule, enables the brickwork skin to be erected
virtually simultaneously, the quality of the finish to the concrete panels is such that the internal walls require little preparation before final decoration all promoting the speedy delivery of the contract.
Bathroom pods - Holiday Inn Express standard - are fully prefabricated off-site and installed as part of the sequence of erection with the concrete panels.
Mast Climbing Gantry
Used instead of traditional scaffolding, made possible by the flat surface design
of the project. It uses a smaller footprint than scaffold, very important on such
a small site especially on the riverside elevation (reducing the physical impact
on the River Medlock) Preferred by workers due to ease of access and improved
speed, and offer reduced health and safety risk.
