The architecture practice running this project, Productive Ecologies Architects, will work from a small office on the site. This is to the benefit of the project and its working methodology,as it means that meetings with the other Manchester-based members of the IPI can happen on the site, directly where the prototyping is occurring. This will ensure that prototyping evaluation information is constantly available to the architects. Once the first full phase of construction is completed, the architecture practice will move into a permanent office within the cast structure.
The architectural project team will consist of two architects (one of them a practice partner), one assistant and one technologist. The practice will have professional indemnity insurance, as is required under Standard 8 of the ARB Architects Code of Conduct.
Other consultants on the project will not be in-house, although the IPI will engender a close working relationship, and will be appointed directly by the client. The key consultants will be a structural engineer, an MEP engineers, a landscape architect and a quantity surveyor, alongside more an environmental/ecological consultant focused on the current natural elements of the site, and a permacultural/agricultural consultant focused on the planned food growing programme. It will be very important for these two specialist consultants to have a close working relationship.
The Plan of Work (fig.14) shows the roles of the key participants at different stages for the first main construction phase.
Fig.14 – RIBA Plan of Work project roles table
This indicates the key stakeholders and actors within the project and at which stages they would be involved.
Each new phase every four years would involve a new contract, to keep things well controlled and logically mapped against the Plan of Work phases.
The unprecedented nature of this project means too things for the costing. Firstly, an experienced quantity surveyor will be needed, who has a good working relationship with all other team members, to fully understand the project. Secondly, reasonable contingencies will certainly need to be built into the project budget, for any unforeseen circumstances that haven’t arisen during the prototyping.
The table on the adjacent page (fig.15) shows costings calculated based on Spons data.
Fig.15 – project costing for the first main construction phase occurring in year 5, based on Spons data
The cost of planting and maintaining bamboo will also have to be considered and included.
Based on fee scales for the size of this new-build project, the architects’ fees will be 4.5% of the contract price or the final cost, whichever is higher.
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