|
In moving to its new UK headquarters in Canary Wharf,international news and information group,Reuters,has adopted a sustainable approach to building use that addresses the company’s needs while making optimum use of existing services.Faber Maunsell carried out the building services and structural design for the project.
Relocation of the majority of Reuters’ London staff to a single location was initiated under the company’s Fast Forward programme.It followed a similar,highly successful exercise in the USA,where New York employees were moved to a single site in Times Square.
Prior to the move,Reuters operated ten offices in London and seven of these were vacated,with around 2500 staff being based at Canary Wharf.The timing of the project was critical as four of the vacated properties were to be transferred to Canary Wharf Group within a very short time frame.Design work began in September 2004 and the building was handed over in May 2005.
The building was originally constructed in 1992 and occupied for most of the intervening years by London Underground Limited.
Throughout the design of the building services for Reuters,the underlying philosophy was to adopt a sustainable approach,making optimum use of existing services and only adapting and upgrading where necessary.
Another unusual feature of the project is the attention that has been paid to the ongoing management of the building.To that end,the facilities services providers have been part of the design team from the beginning of the project,ensuring that ease of maintenance was integrated into the design.Reuters has a full repairing lease on the building, so is responsible for all plant and maintenance.
30 South Colonnade offers around 26,000m2(280,000 ft2)of net office space through floors one to ten,with the ground floor housing a range of retail outlets,for which Reuters is now the landlord.The building is located close to Canary Wharf underground station and Reuters is making full use of this high profile location with the installation of a large plasma screen and an electronic ‘ticker tape’ on the outside of the building.The ticker tape is believed to be the largest LED (light emitting diode) display in Europe.
In terms of the reliability and back-up required from the services, office floors have been divided into two sections helping Faber Maunsell to identify areas where upgrading of services was essential and those areas where existing services would be adequate.Floors one to five house critical client-facing activities such as computer suites and these have the highest level of protection with full redundancy of all plant so there is no downtime during maintenance or in the event of plant failure.
On these critical floors,which include 700m2 of new computer rooms, additional cooling has been provided and a new 2MW cooling tower has been installed to provide capacity for further expansion of the cooling systems.
On floors six to ten,the activities are less critical and the existing building services systems have been retained with only very minor adjustments to accommodate changes in layout.This approach has enabled Reuters to ensure that its key services are fully protected, without wasting existing facilities,in keeping with the company’s commitment to minimising environmental impact.
All of the floors are protected by standby power generation,using two diesel rotary UPS systems.With both systems running,full power is maintained to all floors.Should one of the diesel rotary units fail, the remaining unit has sufficient capacity to supply the critical floors one to five at full power.
As part of its Fast Forward programme,Reuters is providing staff with more flexible ways of working,adopting mobile technologies more widely with a hot-desking arrangement for when peripatetic staff are in the office.To address this,Faber Maunsell has designed IT networks that integrate hard wiring and wireless Local Area Networks,so that hot-desking staff log in via the wireless access points.Particular attention has been paid to the security of the wireless network,with the highest levels of encryption being incorporated.
Flexibility and low life cycle costs are also enhanced by the design of the lighting,which uses T5 linear fluorescent light sources in most areas,for optimum energy consumption and long life to extend re-lamping cycles.The lighting is controlled using DALI(Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) protocol,so that each luminaire is addressable.This enables any changes in the lighting configuration, resulting from changes to the office layout,to be accommodated using software with no need for changes to the hard wiring.
The DALI system is also used to provide daylight linking,so that electric lighting can be dimmed in relation to levels of natural daylight entering the space.Again,this helps to minimise the energy consumption of the lighting Reaching out As travellers leave Canary Wharf underground station and move towards the main Canada Square complex they pass a plasma screen and a ticker tape mounted on the outside of the Reuters building,running the latest news stories from around the world.
The ticker tape runs around the front of the building,measuring 102 metres long and 500mm in height.All of the latest news headlines are displayed on the ticker tape,and key stories are also portrayed pictorially on a six metre x three metre giant LED screen,known as Reuters Infopoint,which dominates the recently renamed Reuters Plaza at the heart of the Canary Wharf development.Faber Maunsell advised on the structural reinforcement required to take the weight of these display units.
Additional structural work included a deck for an array of large satellite dishes on the roof of the building.These are illuminated with blue LED spotlights,again very energy efficient,drawing attention to the building from the surrounding high level towers , many of which are occupied by Reuters principle financial services clients.
The refurbishment of 30 South Colonnade marks the latest project in a long association between Faber Maunsell and Canary Wharf.The Reuters project is characterised by an attention to detail that has fully addressed Reuters’ needs for more flexible ways of working,while making minimum changes to the existing building.
