Blog

We took a dilapidated town centre and transformed it into a vibrant social space.  The brief was to take down the overpowering canopies, replace the shop fronts, refurbish the existing stores, replace roof coverings and windows, re-landscape the street scheme and convert the existing first floor storage area into a state of the art office space.  SPC Partnership were employed as Employers Agents for this Design and Build project, which was commissioned at the outset of the pandemic.  The challenges didn’t end there, with the Suez Canal crisis and the Ukrainian War which saw material costs escalate to unprecedented levels leading to challenges on site requiring ongoing reviews and value engineering.  Moreover, when we removed the first floor windows we found that none of the brickwork was actually tied into the frame of the building; this required a robust internal timber frame forming and fixing to the inside of the unstable brickwork, this coupled with the rebuilding of the parapet added another £400,000 to the contract sum and despite extensive due diligence was completely unavoidable.  Despite all of the obstacles we had to overcome, the team stuck together and the project reached its conclusion in September after 18 months on site.  Sale is our local town, so we’re proud to have had the opportunity to transform what was widely regarded by residents as a jettisoned space that failed to compliment what continues to be a thriving town.