White Collar Factory
White Collar Factory, is an ambitious new office development located at the heart of the ‘silicon roundabout’ technology quarter, and close to London’s vibrant financial district.
AECOM delivered a range of building services for the new development, a c.293,000 sq ft building comprising commercial workspace, residential and retail facilities. The office building also features the UK’s first running track for employees to use on-site, located on the fifteenth floor of the sixteen-floor space. There is also a rooftop bar with fantastic views of London for employees to enjoy.
AECOM delivered cost management, monitoring and peer review of services, sustainability, lifts, fire, acoustics, ITC, facades and security for the project. AECOM reviewed LEED and BREEAM, and the scheme was subsequently awarded LEED Platinum and BREEAM Outstanding, as well as Wired Score Platinum. The project was designed by architectural practice Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) and delivered by developer Derwent London.
White Collar Factory produces 25% less carbon over current building regulations. The building was designed with tall ceilings for increased volume and flexibility in use and adaptation, increased natural daylight and ventilation penetration, as well as even distribution of artificial lighting.
The building also has smart servicing, including maximum possible use of passive systems, natural day lighting and ventilation. A simple façade provides effective shading where necessary, as well as openable windows and variable glazing aligned to building orientation.
Flexible floor plates offer the potential for two-way split tenancy per flor or optional voids between floors to connect tenancies. A high thermal mass structure was used to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the building.
David Thornley, Director, AECOM, said: “We are proud to have been involved with such an iconic and revolutionary project. The result is a ready-to-go workspace that can be easily adapted and refined to suit business needs and changes, achieved in a sustainable, cost effective way.”
Tenants already in occupation at the building include Adobe, AKTII, BGL, Box.com, Capital One, Runpath, Spark44, The Office Group and Workshop Coffee.
Aldgate Tower
With a growing business, the AECOM portfolio in Greater London was expanding. With a major merger just completed and several lease expiries due, there was an opportunity to use the workplace as a catalyst for integration, collaboration and a change in ways of working for its employees. The Aldgate Tower project represents AECOM’s need to transform its working practices, redefine its culture and reflect its strength in creating and delivering environments that are inspiring places to live, work and play.
With 2,000 people working across four locations within Greater London, our vision was not just to bring these together into three hubs (Aldgate, Croydon and St Albans), but to create a campus – a network of communities to bring our people together, to inspire, learn, innovate and nurture the next generation of designers, engineers, architects and project and cost managers. Providing a platform from which to communicate our values and mission would allow us to deliver the world’s biggest and best projects, and partner with our clients in a more effective way. Aldgate’s role within this city campus is to provide AECOM with a global client showcase.
Challenges
Our brand promise is “Built to deliver a better world”. A key challenge on this project would be to make sure we lived up to this promise internally, as well as externally. For our people to do their best for our clients, we need them to be working effectively, collaborating across disciplines and doing so in a workplace that showcases what we do and how we do it.
We assembled a fully integrated internal team, bringing our design, construction and people skills together including workplace strategy, interior design, all building engineering services, cost, project management, HSE, Communications and Brand, HR, Real Estate & Facilities Management and Organisational Development. This enabled us to innovate faster, designing and delivering 7990m² in an 18-week construction period and a five-day window of moving.
We identified early on that occupancy across multiple floors could fracture adjacencies between business units and teams. Establishing vertical connectivity was critical to make sure we stayed true to one of AECOM’s core values – collaboration. We connected the floors through a feature stair between floors, bounded on each by unique destinations, to form communities for our people.
Innovation
After research and close analysis, AECOM’s leadership and project steering group decided to enable all workers to be agile in the new environment, a completely different way of working for our designers, engineers, architects and project managers, and one which pushed through existing technical constraints for an Architectural and Engineering organisation.
Moving to agile working meant that all 2,000 of our people across the Greater London Campus needed to be equipped with the technology that they would need in order to transition seamlessly to the new environment. The roll-out of this, as well as a new telephone system, was carefully planned and road-tested months prior to the final move to Aldgate, which enabled a soft landing on occupation.
We designed in-house a ‘Where we Work’ app to provide a host of information, including how to use the new spaces, critical health and safety information, tips on becoming more “paper-light”, and useful local information. This meant that, from day one, our people had all the details they needed to get up and running quickly and to get the most out of their new workspace. The app was instrumental in communicating to a large and diverse workforce, and continues to be used across our Greater London Campus, now also forming part of our induction process.
The workspace
The workspace itself is designed to eliminate silos, encourage creativity and innovation right across the organisation. With a diverse mix of work styles among staff, the workspace provides a flexible landscape of settings which are carefully designed in order to suit those with a technical role whilst at the same time supporting those in consultancy functions. Business units can easily expand within their neighbourhoods or come together as project teams, due to the flexible approach deployed in the workplace IT design and enhanced CAT A MEP design.
Wayfinding is simple and intuitive, supported by clear circulation and destination points across the floors, and enhanced through open-plan landscaping and exposed ceiling services. Core support spaces are playfully signposted, with unique names given to each central community spaces such as The Grocer and the Workshop.
The overall internal workplace aesthetic embodies the AECOM brand, through the subtle but effective use of materials graphics and AECOM’s local and global portfolio of work. Photography and designs around the building tell the story of what we do, our values and what we stand for.
Sustainability
AECOM’s new offices in Aldgate Tower were designed entirely in-house and the SKA rating principles were woven into the design. Office fit-outs typically introduce a range of toxins into the internal environment, through microbial contamination of the ductwork and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the furniture, fittings and even the cleaning products. This project achieved a SKA ‘Gold’ rating at the handover stage, which recognises exemplary performance in improving environmental performance and enhancing the health and wellbeing of occupants.
AECOM’s move to Aldgate Tower was always about more than the building itself. Yes, we wanted to create a modern new workspace, a sustainable design and a global showcase for what we do, but it was also about bringing our teams together and creating a connected Greater London campus to enhance collaboration and drive innovation.
The results
The project exceeded expectations and fundamentally changed the way we work: boundaries have been replaced with relationships, individualism has been replaced by collectivism; email has been replaced with conversation.
Now many months in, the change is tangible, with a greater energy and vibrancy. Staff are more engaged, more collaborative, more excited about the wider possibilities and their own development, and are dreaming bigger.
The impact of this design is huge and means a great deal to us as a business, and how we work and how we continue to support our clients in the future.
Serpentine Pavilion
The Serpentine Pavilion is one of the most exciting projects in London’s cultural calendar and one of the top ten most-visited architectural and design exhibitions in the world. Each year, the Serpentine Galleries commissions an international architect to design a temporary pavilion for the gallery grounds.
The pavilion hosts a range of events throughout the summer, including a café and free family activities during the day and a space for the Serpentine’s acclaimed Park Nights programme of performative works by artists, writers and musicians by night.
AECOM has been involved with the project for the past five years, delivering a range of technical advisory services for the exciting programme. The tight timescale for erecting the Serpentine Pavilion always makes the project a particularly rewarding scheme to deliver. From the first spade hitting the ground to completion, the Serpentine Pavilion is typically built and delivered in around six weeks.
The technical advisory team plays an important role in the creative process, working closely with the architects to transform their designs into functional and buildable spaces without losing sight of their original vision.
In 2017, we will deliver structural, civil, fire and electrical engineering services for the Pavilion, as well as planning and regulatory support for the architect Diébédo Francis Kéré from Burkina Faso.
In 2016, for the first time, the Serpentine Galleries expanded its annual architectural programme to include four Summer Houses and AECOM delivered full technical and engineering design services for these structures. In 2015, AECOM provided engineering and technical advisory services for Selgascano’s colourful, translucent, chrysalis-like structure. In 2014 the company helped design and deliver Smiljan Radić’s toroidal shell structure and in 2013 it provided engineering and technical design services for Sou Fujimoto’s cloud-like pavilion.
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London Cycle Super Highway
The Cycle Superhighways are part of a plan by Transport for London (TfL) and the Mayor to encourage more people to commute by bike and help ease the city’s congestion, relieve overcrowding on public transport and reduce pollution. The provision of twelve cycle-only lanes, clearly marked blue, aim to increase cycling in London by 400 percent by 2025 compared to 2000 levels. Each route is 10–15 kilometers (six miles) long
AECOM is working on the routes between Lewisham in south east London and Victoria and between Kingston Vale in the south west and Westminster. The company is undertaking feasibility, detailed design and supervision work.
The commission includes designing and supervising the implementation of a host of innovative measures to make commuting by bike a more attractive option. TfL will introduce a range of initiatives including training, a bicycle rental program and bicycle parking.
The Shard
Our expert team provided cost management, value/risk management, tax advice and specification consultancy services on The Shard at London Bridge, the tallest building in Western Europe.
Designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, The Shard is a 1,016 feet / 310 meter mixed-use high-rise tower, or more accurately a “vertical city.” Appointed just days before it was called in for a Public Inquiry in 2002, our cost management team assisted the client and its designers from the beginning of the project to its completion, helping to ensure a commercially successful scheme without compromising its architectural and engineering credentials.
The team worked closely with the architect on what at the time was his first and only project in the United Kingdom, quickly gaining his trust and appreciation. The Shard will shortly be joined by The Place (a 430,500-square-feet office development), another Renzo Piano-designed AECOM project, which will sit across a new public piazza and bus station, helping to form the London Bridge Quarter.
Akerman Health Centre
The £12.4 million Akerman is a flagship project in Lambeth Primary Care Trust’s overall strategy for improving primary care and enabling shift of resource and services from the acute to primary and community health settings.
The national award-winning health centre was delivered through the UK’s National Health Service Local Improvement Finance Trust initiative (LIFT) with AECOM working with the South London Health Partnership LIFT Co, developer Fulcrum and Lambeth PCT to implement an innovative funding model and achieve financial close as well as providing project management and health and safety services throughout the development period.
Cited as ‘a beacon for its community’, the centre accommodates a range of services including GP clinics, dentistry, children’s services, midwifery, primary care and community health services. It also provides a base for Lambeth’s school nurses, health visitors and district nurses and the council’s adults and community services team.