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Fitting of Glass Walls under a Vaulted roof

Fitting of Glass Walls under a Vaulted roof
Glass walls and office furniture

Client: RTS
Value: £33k

Although the main title to this project post relates to the Vaulted roof design of the space, half the value of the project was for office furniture. A mixture of desks, soft seating, chairs and stools all designed with a selection of vibrant colours. The desks had dark charcoal worktops and white desks frames which looked pretty cool.

The customer was already in one building and wanted to expand into this one. They wanted a meeting room at one end by the main entrance like their existing space, that was built using an engineered timber system which would have cost an absolute fortune to build. We chose a different method, much more modern as well.

They also needed a breakout space away from the desks, where they could also brainstorm and do some problem solving away from the formality of meeting rooms. The space at the end of the building seemed ideal, so we allocated that space for that function.

The Vaulted Roof

The actual office space looks lovely, nice open roof space with oak beams. The building as well is in an amazing environment, very rural, lots of nice space, plenty of parking. However, as is common with many spaces built by builders, it is not very practical. Looks nice, but for an office space, not great. All of the wall surfaces are hard plastered walls and painted, and the high roof offers little in acoustic performance, the saving grace was at least they had a carpet.

Separating off the space into rooms therefore presents a bit of a problem. They liked the idea of glass walls, so we could build up to the roof beams, and then above the gaps would need to be filled in to prevent noise going through the trusses.

The meeting room needed at the front would need the trusses blocked in, and a new timber beam run along the side with the wall above filled in, with glass underneath in an ‘L’ shape. Along with an entrance door into the main office space.

The ideas room at the end would be more straightforward, build the glass up to the truss, and then infill all of the gaps above.

Initial Plans and Ideas

As always, we draw everything anyway. The main reason is so we can cost things accurately, and we do not always need to give the drawings to the client, but in this case, they paid us separately for the drawing and design work which was nice, and a bit unexpected but they were happy to do this. We also said that should they go ahead with the proposals, we would credit back the cost of the drawing work against the work which is what we did.

Infilling the Trusses and Glass Walls

In two of the overhead trusses, we had to allow to infil these with plasterboard and steel which was always going to be a time consuming job. Each section of the truss is different, it would have been very difficult and expensive to get these infilled with glass and then there is the sound performance issue with glass. Each of the sections we added insulation into the gaps.

Remaining Construction Photos

Below shows the remaining construction photos, some show the assembly of the desks using a ‘beam’ system, with shared leg frames. The main advantage in using a beam system is that the support leg frames are shared amongst adjoining desks, hence reduce the costs. Shared leg frames gives more leg room under the desks. The central spine of the desk cluster also has a cable management tray which keeps all of the power and data off the floor. The cabling can then be run from the edge of the walls, rather than worry about floor boxes near where people sit. Floor boxes would need cables running up from the floor boxes to the desks. Much neater to have cable management in the desks themsleves.

Also shown is the write on ideas wall, the glass writing board, the meeting tables, boardroom table and the other furniture in the rooms.

Space Planning and Design Work

If you are unsure of what can be done with a space, we really like to do the space planning and design work, working with what space you have. Making the most of the features that are in the building and maximising the light using glass walls, introducing vibrant colours and having an area to stimulate ideas were all aspects of this project that were enjoyable to do. If you have a project similar, and have any questions we would love to be involved in your project. The first visit is always free and the advice is free as well. If you are not sure what is involved you are not sure on how things can be done, then we are sure we can help.

Please call 01380 73 8844 or email us via the contact form on this website, or at [email protected]

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Complete Office Design and Fit Out Project in Swindon

Complete Office Design and Fit Out Project in Swindon

Client: One Technologies
Value: £260k

We carried out an Office design and fit out fit out project for One Technologies Ltd in Swindon,Wiltshire. The project included creating ideas for the design, detail specification and documents, planning and then organising the work which was completed on time within budget.

The customer is an American company that wanted to set up and office in the UK. They had a breakfast bar in their office in Dallas, we tried to replicate the way they work in the US so part of their culture of how they work comes across into the UK. The customer is a web based company and the new office will be receiving inbound calls so is basically a call center. The image of a phone box in the reception is intended to reflect this and is one reason why there is a  concentration of desks in space. The digital image that is printed on heavy textured wall covering. Desk footprint was important in getting the right numbers in, and we have designed this so they can increase the numbers easily, all of the future space planning has been done. You will see the grey wallpaper in the office is very textured to give some personality to the paper and help with sound performance.

The activities included Office Design, Project Management, CDM regulations, Building Regulations, contracts, stripping out work, demountable glass partitioning, decorations, design of a breakfast bar, supply and fit of all office furniture, air conditioning new and changes to existing, ventilation changes, lighting, electrical work, data cabling, supply and fitting of the communications cabinet, cctv, access control, audio visual equipment and connection, storage wall and flooring changes. We also supplied all of the office furniture, screens, cupboards, plants, graphics, chairs and monitor arms.

Preparation work.

Much of the initial time on the project was spent exploring different layouts and seeing how the space could work. Care was taken in seeing how the customer wanted to use the space to have an area where people could relax and have teas and coffees.

Design Visuals.

We have covered elsewhere in this website our view on visuals. Please click this link for more explanation as to the difference between drawing work, space planning and 3d visuals. As a large proportion of the cost of the project focused around the breakfast bar we felt creating visuals was really important. The breakfast bar being an essential part of the office design. The film taken of this project reinforces how much the finished build reflects the initial visuals we produced for the project. Although they are in the film clip, they can be seen below:

Specifications, contract and planning.

The next step was to provide much more detail in the the specifications in the form of written documents. We had a commercial contract drawn up, as well as produced a full build specification document detailing every aspect of the build. Due to the amounts of money involved £250k +, we produced a project plan which showed the phases of when payments were due to be made depending on when various parts of the project were delivered. The final document was a detailed Gantt chart showing project timelines, dates, slack periods, completion dates and contingencies. Also built in were times required for the American IT team to visit and have all of the computer equipment installed and configured.

Build Photographs.

As you can see from the photographs there was quite a bit to organise, in particular we had to follow the progress to a programme, as well as maintaining dates that had to fit in with the American IT team visiting the UK to install the server the programme had to be met for the financial reasons in order to maintain a steady flow of payments coming to us from the USA. The main office design and fit out project for us was only one small part in order to get the office up and working. The customers IT people only had 3 days to install all of the equipment, so all of the infrastructure cabling, power, air conditioning, cabinets and of course all of the security access controls and cameras had to be fully working before they came over to visit. They were bringing with them a special server built by Dell to handle the call volumes anticipated in the office and the server itself cost 7 figures.

Final photographs finished office.

We are very please with the final office design and fit out. If you have not seen the video in the first part of this page then you can also see it here by here by clicking this text..

Moving / expanding or have problems with your existing office space?

Many offices have problems with sound, problems with fitting enough people in, and may look dated and need reworking which is where we can help. From an initial brief as to what the problems are to the final completed office we can carry out everything that you need inside an office. In the project above we used demountable partitioning but using a special type of glass to enhance sound performance. The system was also a propriety demountable partition system called Komfort Polar. The glass wall was double glazed, with seamless glass joints for a smooth simple look.

Why Demountable Partitions in Office Refurbishments?

  1. Demountable partitions are tax efficient in that they are seen as movable items and so can be treated differently in writing down allowances in the accounts, we can also lease elements of office refurbishments. Anything that can be moved.
  2. We mainly lease Demountable Partitions as they are movable, this spreads the costs of having the work done as Demountable Partitions always cost more than customers think.
  3. Leasing of movable items is very tax efficient and Cre8tive can provide illustrations, please contact us for further information.
  4. Most landlords insist on demountable partitions in an office as it is much easier to take them out should the tenant renting the space leave for any reason. The benefit is that is saves making a huge amount of mess and destruction that would be need with a conventional stud and plasterboard constructed wall.

Not sure what to do?

Please give us a call and we can help with any aspect of interior office fit out, along with space planning and design work.

01380 73 88 44