Wilmcote House Retrofit, Portsmouth City Council

Keegans were appointed to provide Project Management, Quantity Surveying and Principal Designer services alongside our sister company ECD Architects whom are the lead designers on the refurbishment works for Wilmcote House.

Once complete, Wilmcote House will be the first large scale project reaching the EnerPHit standard (retrofit equivalent of Passivhaus).

Wilmcote House was constructed in 1968 and is an 11 storey large panel ‘Bison’ REEMA variant. A number of major elements of the building were coming to the end of their serviceable life with the result that the building now required major refurbishment.

It was decided to retrofit and refurbish Wilmcote House to extend its life for a minimum of a further 30 years providing a sustainable approach for the estate’s regeneration, significantly reduce heat loss/energy use and fuel poverty for residents as well as contributing to the Somerstown area-wide regeneration.

This project started as a simple overcladding project with a £3m budget. We advised the client from inception that the budget was not enough for an overcladding project of this size. Following extensive consultation we then worked closely with the client to redefine the brief by advising that whilst overcladding, would also be worth carrying out the list of works below. We then provided them with information of potential funding available if they were able to go that one step further and make it an EnerPHit project.

Works included:

• Structural remediation of external structure
• Installation of insulation to external walls
• Replacement of glazing
• Flat roof conversion with upgrading existing levels of roof insulation
• Provision of a new heating system
• Decoration of external concrete areas not to be overclad or rendered
• Installation of fire rated composite entrance doors to properties

Attracting ECO funding, the project has been designed to meet the stringent EnerPHit standard, the retrofit equivalent to Passivhaus. Achievement of this standard will reduce annual heating and hot water costs by 90%, saving around £750 per dwelling per annum in energy bills.

As part of this project we will be refurbishing the community centre including overcladding, reconfiguring, new insulation and roof to ensure it becomes a valuable asset for the community to use.

As Quantity Surveyors, we have provided cost plans through out the design stages and worked with client and architects to gain additional funding via EnerPHit.

We worked closely with the client to produce the tender documents including Bills of Quantities and the pricing document. It was tendered via OJEU 2 stage procurement.

On site, as Quantity Surveyors we carried out regular valuations and cost reports and reviewed any variations submitted by the contractor against what had been carried out on site and adjusted accordingly. This process was carried out monthly and reported back to the client.

In addition to the above, we also submitted variation claims, negotiated and used KPI’s to agree on variations. This was an ongoing process throughout the project and ultimately resulted in the final account.

We provided the client with monthly cost reports with measurements against the contract sum advising the client if the project was on budget and any predicted overspend as well as assisted in any extension of time claims from a financial point of view.