Nordea Bank employed us to achieve best value and a positive outcome for their City of London relocation. We helped them to implement more space-efficient working practices and a 20% reduction in real estate. The brief was to ensure an impressive London centric design with a Nordic twist. The space plan made best use of the London skyline for the client facing suite whilst supporting a significant office space for a busy administrative and sales centre.
We spent some considerable time ensuring the layout and budget were approved before a competitive tender process. Twelve Design and Build companies entered a pre-qualification process to enable three approved contractors to proceed to the tender phase. The Nordea Bank project team unanimously preferred the design development proposal presented by Peldon Rose and they were selected to take the project into the implementation phase.
We worked closely with Peldon Rose through a process of due diligence and sensible value engineering, agreeing a fixed price for the whole project. The cost plan was reviewed in detail, against our original specification, to ensure that it was fully inclusive. The risk to Nordea Bank of increasing cost during the project was therefore minimised. We liaised with Nordea’s legal team to set up the construction contract for a 16-week build programme, which included working with the landlord to gain approvals and ultimately the licence to alter. Our ongoing project management included contract administration, so we produced a cash flow forecast and carried out regular valuations in order to manage a staged payment process. We concluded our involvement by managing the snagging to practical completion and returned at the end of the 12-month defects liability period for a review, prior to signing off the retention.
