Three recycled and refurbished modular buildings have been provided by Foremans Relocatable Building Systems to United Utilities – the company which supplies water and sewage services to around seven million people and 200,000 businesses in the North West.
The buildings were needed on two sites to upgrade office accommodation and replace outdated facilities with purpose-designed office space and meeting rooms. Completion was just 10 weeks after receipt of order.
At Gatewarth Industrial Estate in Warrington, a 22-module scheme is occupied by around 85 staff. Facilities include open plan offices, meeting rooms, managers’ offices, kitchen, toilets and customer service reception. A smaller Foremans building is used as a purpose-built meeting room suite.
In St Helens, an 8-module building is now in use 24/7 providing interim office accommodation for 17 staff and up to 30 shift workers while another site is redeveloped.
Each building was delivered to site around 70% complete, reducing disruption to United Utilities’ operations. Foremans also supplied folding partitions, roller security shutters, air conditioning, and fire and security alarms.
Commenting on the choice of recycled modular buildings, Gary Collins, Building Surveyor at United Utilities, said, “Each of these three projects was delivered on time, as expected and to very high quality standards. Foremans also gave us the opportunity to spec the buildings to our exact service needs. Feedback from the users has been extremely positive and staff have been unable to tell these are not brand new buildings.”
“We would definitely use the approach again. Indeed, having experienced recycled modular buildings, it is now unlikely we would specify new-build going forward because the quality of Foremans pre-owned is so good and the cost is considerably less.”
United Utilities is investing more than £3bn in improving the water and wastewater infrastructure and the environment across the North West, covering over 42,000km of water pipes from Cumbria to Cheshire, over 76,000km of sewers, and 569 wastewater treatment works.
The use of recycled Portakabin buildings is one of the most environmentally sound methods of construction. It generates less than 10% of the carbon emissions and uses less than 3% of the energy during construction, compared to a newly manufactured building of equivalent size (source: MPBA/Arup). Other benefits include programme times reduced by up to 70%, reduced cost, and the buildings can be easily expanded, reconfigured or removed if an organisation’s requirements change.
For further information about recycled and refurbished Portakabin buildings, visit www.foremansbuildings.info, email [email protected], or call 01964 544344.
