Managing the Paralympics

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When workers took down a huge mirror over a fireplace in a white-painted bedroom, they found richly decorated paper behind it. The company responsible, Angel Interiors, turned to wallpaper expert Allyson McDermott to recreate it. “We did it exactly as it was done 130 years ago,” explains Gary Butcher, managing director of Angel Interiors. The first job was to make a paper that exactly matched the composition of the original, then cover it in gold leaf. This transformation has been carried out by contractor Galliford Try and an army of specialist subcontractors. “Because of the size of the project and complexity of the schemes, we have had three or four specialists working on the heritage schemes and several conventional decorators as well,” explains Simon Frawley, Galliford Try’s project director. This project has been a game of two halves for him. Conversion of the top four floors into apartments was completed in May 2009. Since January 2009, Frawley has been concentrating on the hotel, where the changes have been much more restricted. The restoration is part of a wider regeneration of the area, which began with the transformation of neighbouring St Pancras station into Britain’s Eurostar terminal. The two buildings are not much alike, though – whereas William Barlow’s train shed epitomises brilliant, functional Victorian engineering, George Gilbert Scott’s hotel is all about romance, grandeur and style. It opened in 1876, but was forced to shut 59 years later, mainly because it had only eight bathrooms for 300 rooms. “The toilet was invented six years after it was finished, so this place was redundant almost overnight,” says Geoff Mann, principal director of RHWL, the project architect.

Farrell with have a better idea following a couple of days training regarding the readiness of each individual for what promises to be a titanic tussle against the in-form Scots.The arrival of high speed rail services did not quite complete the rebirth of London’s St Pancras station. Mark Hansford reports on the final challenge of restoring and reopening the Gothic glory that is Gilbert Scott’s Midland Grand Hotel. Since its closure, the building has been threatened with demolition twice, turned into drab offices, then closed down and left to rot in the late eighties after the owner, British Rail, could not renew its fire certificate.

The building had been empty for God knows how long and British Rail had sacrilegiously beaten up the details,” says Mann. “For example, it had bashed holes in the fibrous plaster ceilings to put in hangers for suspended ceilings. All this made it quite difficult to ascertain what was behind the changes, which made it difficult to design.” We’ve got these cultures that have grown up in construction over many years. It’s just light years away from manufacturing companies. Watch live coverage of Bulls v Connacht in the United Rugby Championship from 2.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, and listen to live commentary on RTÉ Radio 1 With work being carried out largely “top down” these apartments were finished first and many are already let, meaning work continues full pelt on the hotel but with absolute controls on noise and disturbance. If a building isn’t suitable for MMC, we think there is more risk in trying to apply MMC when it’s not fit for purpose. The start of our journey was to understand what we build and understand it as a product. The reason for that was that if we were going to get the benefits of the approach, we had to understand the basics of building our products.”Getting plumbing into the apartments was difficult enough, but air-conditioning requirements meant space had to be found for bulky ductwork and plant. “Integrating the services and running these around the building has probably been the hardest part of the project,” says Frawley. Minimising ductwork and pipe runs was a key strategy, so plant is dotted around the building to be as near as possible to where it is needed: in the basement, on the roof of the new 207-bed extension, and in the roofspace of Barlow House, which connects the original hotel to the extension. Air-handling units have been hidden behind ceilings, services distributed vertically using the original lift shafts and false ceilings hide the horizontal runs. In many rooms a modern-looking pod houses the bathroom. They eventually ran out 54-5 victors but Munster won’t be near as wasteful if they get the hosts on the ropes.