Friday, 10 May 2013

With work progressing so quickly on 21 Prescot Street, it's vital to keep on top of developments. Chief Executive Vanessa Cameron, Director of Finance Paddy Padmanathan, and Head of Facilities Lesley Cawthra are meeting almost every morning to discuss progress, and co-ordinate the major works programme. Members of the College's Finance and Operations team are also paying regular visits.

On Wednesday (8 May), the design team for the new building met to discuss the first visuals for the ground floor and reception area. These designs have been well-received, and the final plans for these areas are likely to be approved by College Officers and the Members' Advisory Group next week.

The design for the kitchen area has now been agreed, though the canteen area has yet to be designed and agreed. The College will be going out to tender very shortly for catering services for the new building.

As we announced earlier this week on Twitter, scaffolding has been erected at the front of the building, and the rest of the scaffolding will be erected next week.   Work on the inside of the building started two weeks ahead of schedule, so we are still on course for moving in at the beginning of October.   Partitions are being constructed between areas, and on the first floor (pictured left), workmen have been busy lowering the raised floor to increase the head height and bring it in line with the other floors in the building.   With so many contractors on site, work is progressing very rapidly - and we'll use this blog to keep you updated every step of the way.

If you would like to post a comment on the Prescot Street blog, please email the Website Manager, who'll be happy to upload it for you.

Thursday, 2 May 2013

Although we haven’t blogged recently, a huge amount of work has been going on at 21 Prescot Street.

As we reported a few weeks ago, we have appointed Area Sq as our design and build contractors. We invited thirteen companies to tender for the contract and we shortlisted four.  We were very impressed by the enthusiasm and track record of Area Sq, and you can see the kind of work they undertake on the gallery of images on their website.

Area Sq are already on site at Prescot Street – starting two weeks earlier than scheduled. The whole building is now a "hard hat" area and access is under their control. The photo below shows how work is progressing on the fourth floor. Scaffolding is being erected on the outside of the building, which will allow work to begin on the windows and the exterior. 
 

We are in the midst of a series of intensive meetings with Area Sq while they finalise the designs for the whole building. During this process, the Building Steering Group has met with the Members’ Advisory Group to discuss the ground and first floors, and the Staff Advisory Group to discuss the office accommodation.

It is important that the new building meets our needs, so a detailed audit of our storage needs at both Belgrave Square and Standon House has been carried out by a contractor. The results of this audit will help inform the design and layout of the new building.

We are also very excited to have appointed an art consultant, David Gryn. He will be advising on which works of art already in the College should go to Prescot Street, and whether we need to acquire any new forms of art. 

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

In our second 21 Prescot Street blog entry, we talked about some of the history of Prescot Street - including the fact that it was one of the first London streets in which the houses were given numbers instead of names.

Over the Easter weekend Neil Balmer, one of the @rcpsych's Twitter followers, sent us a link to this interesting blog post by Mark Pack. Titled 'Prescot Street: far more important than it looks', Mark's blog entry shares some additional information about numbering as well as some nice photographs of the street.

Mark describes Prescot Street as "a fairly bland, unexceptional street", with "plenty of office architecture that could be from just about anywhere in the UK".

Hopefully the Royal College of Psychiatrists will bring a little more character to the neighbourhood when we finish our refurbishment of number 21 and move in to the building in October!

If you would like to post a comment on the Prescot Street blog, please email the Website Manager, who'll be happy to upload it for you.

Thursday, 28 March 2013

The Project Group met yesterday to review the four tenders received from Design and Build companies towards the refurbishment of 21 Prescot Street. The companies were invited to price discrete parts of the project such as design, demolition, partitioning, audio-visual equipment, as well as come up with ideas for the redesign of the reception area and front of the building. These tenders were scrutinised in great detail by the Project Management company, Watts, and each submission went through a very thorough comparison and analysis.

There were two close contenders, however the Project Group was particularly impressed by the experience, resources and team structure, the proposed methodology and approach to Health and Safety of one organisation, Area Sq.

The Project Group met the team from Area Sq yesterday and they were delighted to take on this major and exciting project. Area Sq’s team will be meeting with our project management team from Watts early next week to start working on plans and planning permission for the project.

The next few weeks will be a busy time for the Project Group, College Officers and for the College members and staff who sit on our consultive groups. Major decisions will need to be made promptly on the design of the building, surface finishes and decorations, including the more major structural and architectural works such as the new windows and reception area.

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Last week, our Chief Executive, our Head of Facilities and members of the 21 Prescot Street staff representative committee visited a furniture showroom for a taster of what our new offices might look like. Although we may not be getting the exact items we saw, it was still exciting to see the latest in office solutions.

The team particularly enjoyed trying out the office chairs, which are now so ergonomically advanced that a technician is available to make sure each chair is individually adjusted to its new user when it is delivered. This is particularly important for staff who spend a lot of the day sat at their desks – in the new building we will all be models of good posture!.

The new building will also include small, informal breakout areas, and the possibilities for more casual seating in these areas seem endless. We quickly learnt that looks and comfort do not always go hand-in-hand. For example, something that looked suspiciously like a large grey brick was surprisingly comfortable to sit in. But a stylishly curved and visually very attractive chair forced the user to sprawl backwards in a manner reminiscent of Henry VIII, in his later years, at his most regal.

We also saw some 'pebbles' for informal perching in lime green - pictured below in a more discreet grey.  We weren't sure about these but will keep an open mind , and await the designers' suggestions. And of course all chairs recommended by the office designers will get a thorough testing before the College buys them. 

21 Prescot Street, with its large open spaces, will be a very different environment to the smaller, more enclosed office spaces at Belgrave Square. The furniture showroom demonstrated clearly how open spaces can be visually coherent, as well as quiet and comfortable. Working areas can be partitioned by means as simple as having different coloured dividers between desks, or by using different coloured flooring to distinguish between the main thoroughfares and departmental areas.

Ideas gained from the showroom will be fed into the detailed design plans for the new building – which we will share with you when they’re available.

If you would like to post a comment on the Prescot Street blog, please email the Website Manager, who'll be happy to upload it for you.

Thursday, 14 March 2013

In our last blog, we reported that we’ve gone out to tender with four design and build contractors. While we are waiting for the next phase to begin, it seems like a good time to pause and think about the building that has been our HQ for the last 39 years – 17 Belgrave Square.

For those who haven't visited Number 17, it is a stucco-fronted Regency house built in the early 1830s (see left). The area we know today as Belgravia started being developed by the Grosvenor family in the early 19th century. Previously, it had been a rural area between Westminster and the village of Knightsbridge, but it soon turned into a high-class residential area. Today, the building is owned by The Grosvenor Estate, a portfolio of businesses, rural estates and other assets owned by trusts on behalf of the 6th Duke of Westminster and his family.

According to the archives, Number 17 was first tenanted in 1839 by Sir Ralph Howard, a Whig MP for Wicklow. In the 1841 census he was living here with his wife, seven female servants and four male servants. The next tenant was Pandeli Ralli. He too was an MP, a Liberal who represented Bridport and then Wallingford.

The third tenant was Leontine, Lady Sassoon, who lived here from 1929 to 1942, but retained the tenancy until 1955. She is said to have kept an open house for soldiers during the Second World War, and used part of the property as a Red Cross supply depot.  

Number 17 was taken over by the Institute of Metals in 1956, before the College bought the leasehold for £725,000 in 1974. Thus, in the 174 years since it was first occupied, 17 Belgrave Square has only had five different tenants.

Many visitors to the College are impressed by the beautiful period detail of our formal rooms – the Council Room, Library, Members’ Room and Dining Room. These rooms, with their high ceilings, marble fireplaces and elegant wood paneling, were sympathetically refurbished in the late 1990s.

The crowning glory of our entrance hall is a stunning English crystal chandelier, dating back to the 1890s (see photo below). It was donated to the College in 1976 by The Priory Hospital and  Dr Wilfrid Warren, who was Vice President of the College at the time, thanked the Board of Directors for their generosity and kindness.  We are busy thinking about how the chandelier, along with our collection of portraits, paintings, busts and antiques, can be incorporated into the new building.

With the move to east London later this year, the College is about to start a new chapter in its long history. And so, too, will 17 Belgrave Square, as it prepares to welcome a new tenant.

If you would like to post a comment on the Prescot Street blog, please email the Website Manager, who'll be happy to upload it for you.

Friday 1 March, 2013

The first phase of the relocation project is now complete. Space plans for all six floors have been finalised, and included in the tender documents that have been sent out to four design and build contactors. The contractors have been given four weeks to respond, after which a final decision will be made.

Members of College Council discussed the building project in detail at their last meeting on Friday 22 February. At this meeting, Council approved the budget for the refurbishment work, which will include installing a new air conditioning system and replacing the existing windows (see picture below), for which we have submitted a planning application.

Members of our IT department, headed by Gordon Malcolm, have been working hard to identify our IT requirements in the new building. We are very pleased to report that 21 Prescot Street will have video conferencing equipment in four meeting rooms,  including the Council Room. The necessary cabling will also be installed in other meeting rooms, which will allow us to extend our video conferencing facilities in the future if needed.

Many members have made requests for video-conferencing facilities over the years, but unfortunately we have not been able to provide these at Belgrave Square or Standon House and have instead relied on telephone conferencing. This really is a very exciting development for the College, and we hope that it will allow many more members to get involved in College activities without the need to travel to our London HQ.

The refurbishment project is currently on schedule, and we are working towards a moving date in the first week of October. Check back soon for further updates.

If you would like to post a comment on the Prescot Street blog, please email the Website Manager, who'll be happy to upload it for you.

Monday, 18 February 2013

Plans for 21 Prescot Street are steadily taking shape. Major surveys and inspections of the building have now been completed, which will give us a clearer idea of what work needs to be carried out during the renovation process. This week, we’ll be going out to tender to some ‘design and build’ firms, to find the company who will turn our many ideas for the new building into reality.

One of the most important floors will be the ground floor – which at the moment comprises a relatively plain marble-clad entrance hall and one large open-plan space (see left).    We plan to remodel the hall to create a more welcoming environment, and one that leads into a modern, flexible space for our members and visitors.

Although the floorplans are still under discussion and not yet been finalised, we hope to provide a comfortable lounge and members’ area with tea and coffee facilities. The Library is likely to occupy a large space in the centre of the ground floor, with plenty of seating and workspace. Designing a new library space from scratch is an exciting opportunity and the College’s two Librarians, Beverley Berry and Shaun Kennedy, have been visiting library services in other organisations to pick up ideas.

Beverley says: "In the new building we are planning to have more of a 3D Library, with book promotions on free-standing shelves, arranged by subject or decade.  All College publications will be available for reference, and leaflets and reports will be more accessible. We felt that the Information Centre at the Kings Fund Library was a potential model for our services, and the Heritage Centre at the Royal Society of Medicine is a good model for our Heritage and Archives section. Services at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales were also excellent."

We also hope that the the College’s valuable Antiquarian Collection, which contains over 1,000 rare psychiatric books and dissertations (see below), will benefit from its own dedicated space on the ground floor. At the moment the collection is stored in cupboards in a front room at 17 Belgrave Square, and sadly hidden from public view. In the new building, we aim to have a special exhibition space where we can display items of interest from our archives and Antiquarian Collection for everyone to see.

The ground floor is also likely to feature a number of meeting rooms of varying sizes, as well as one large room big enough to accommodate our regular Council Meetings and occasional dining.

Do let us know if you have any thoughts about what you would like to see in the 21 Prescot Street members' and Library area – you can email your ideas to the Website Manager, who will be happy to upload them to this blog.

Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Today, staff from Belgrave Square and from Standon House visited 21 Prescot Street for their first glimpse of the new building.

They had a tour of all six floors, taking the opportunity to see how the space is laid out and where they will be working after the renovation work is complete. Our archivist, Francis Maunze, was delighted to find rows of mobile shelving located in the basement of the building - and a quick test (see left) was enough to show they are in good working order. Currently, at 17 Belgrave Square, we have very limited storage space - and although a dedicated, climate-controlled archive room was built a few years ago, it is already full.  Francis hopes that these existing mobile shelves can be refurbished to provide improved repository space for our extensive archives and records collection.

Work on the building is progressing apace. We are delighted to be working with Watts Group PLC, who have been engaged by the College to manage the project for us. Richard Love is our Project Manager, ably assisted by James Pilborough. Mechanical and electrical surveys have been conducted, and we are planning to commission consultants to advise us on IT solutions and infrastructures.

A New Building Steering Group has been set up to review and oversee the project's progress. Initial floor plans showing the layout of office space, meeting rooms and member facilities have been drawn up, and will be finalised very shortly.

Thanks to everyone who got in touch about our last blog on the history of the area. Someone rightly observed that we missed out another aspect of the area's history - the infamous Whitechapel murders. The last of the 11 Whitechapel murders, that of 25-year-old Frances Coles, took place on 13 February 1891 and her body was discovered at Swallow Gardens, a passageway running under a railway arch just behind Prescot Street. Today, the railway arches house rows of garages, while the busy DLR line into nearby Tower Gateway station runs along the top.

If you would like to post a comment on the Prescot Street blog, please email the Website Manager, who'll be happy to upload it for you.