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Shard drafts in T&T
Published: 22 May 2008 09:07
Project manager Turner & Townsend has been drafted onto the Shard of Glass project in London to help get the scheme on budget.
A half dozen strong team led by UK director Tim Coleman formally began working on the job this week and will report to the man in charge of the whole development - known as London Bridge Quarter - Bernard Ainsworth.
Mr Ainsworth said the T&T team would be staffed up to around 15 people.
He said: "It is a fairly rapid appointment but we need an expansion of my role and T&T will report to me.
"Every major project needs a project manager and they will be getting involved in all aspects of the job."
T&T will be working with Mace, the firm appointed by developer Teighmore to make sure the scheme is built for £350 million, as well as cost consultant Davis Langdon and engineers WSP and Arup.
Bids for most of the major packages have come back to Mace but Construction News understands that some of these have helped blow the Shard's budget by around 10 per cent.
It is believed the concrete package Đ which John Doyle is slated for - and the M&E deal, which is heading for a team featuring MJN, Phoenix and Hotchkiss, have caused the most headaches.
Mr Ainsworth, who joined the project last month from Atkins and whose previous jobs include running the 2002 Commonwealth Games and working on the Millennium Dome for John Laing, declined to comment on the specifics of the budget. But he said: "I can see a picture that is emerging that is going in the right direction.
"We will be reviewing the picture over the next four or five weeks and it will be a very intensive four or five weeks ahead of us."
Mace had been expected to provide a final figure for the building work this month but Mr Ainsworth said the slip would not affect the main building programme, which is scheduled to start by next January and finish in March 2012.
He said: "A lot of the bids only came back two or three weeks ago but we're still on course to start by the end of the year."
Demolition contractor Keltbray has already taken down three floors of the existing site building, which sits next door to London Bridge station, and is due to finish this work later this year.
Who's who on the Shard
Teighmore is the developer on the project and this is made up of four banks from the Gulf state – Qatari National Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, Q Invest and Barwa International – and Sellar Property Group, headed by Irvine Sellar. Each owns a 20 per cent slice.
The team charged with building the 310 m-high tower is
Mace, while the cost consultant is
Davis Langdon, the structural engineer
WSP and M&E engineer
Arup. A Paris-based company called
Tyrrell is advisor to the banks.
London Bridge Quarter is the name of the entire redevelopment – which includes the Shard – and is headed by Bernard Ainsworth, who reports to Teighmore. This week
Turner & Townsend was appointed project manager.