MoD Building Major Suburban Office
Filton, a typical British suburb, is currently undergoing a block of construction work that may offer the most environmentally solid credentials yet known throughout the UK.
The project is a new addition to the Ministry of Defence’s Abbey Wood building and is a £25 million office project which will allow the 10,000 staff of the Defence Equipment and Support arm to be housed at Abbey Wood with over 600 new desk spaces available once it opens its door next year as the Oak Building.
In order to ensure that the Ministry of Defence building meets environmental standards, the building construction project is being supervised by the MoD’s own Defence Related Environmental Assessment Methodology system which measures the environmental impact on the building and its uses. The same standard is applied to all MoD buildings such as squaddies barracks and aircraft hangers.
Bovis Land Lease and Babcock Infrastructure Services are jointly in charge of the new building’s construction and will be responsible for checking all environmental factors before the DE&S allows staff to move into the new 9,000 sq m of space.
Senior construction manager Simon Mack said that although the building is still a standard office building, its creation will be a combination of the best practices that exist in design and architecture so that it will be an affordable and sustainable building.
Mack pointed out that the building will not be a flagship project, but instead a prosaic of how efficiency can be increased realistically in the construction of future buildings.
