Portsmouth Travelodge Achieves Practical Completion
Portsmouth Travelodge reached its ultimate milestone- Practical Completion- at the end of October.
The hotel is located right in the city centre with views over the city itself and over to the port and historic dockyard from the upper floors. Whilst enviable for the hotel, the city centre location meant we had a number of logistical challenges to meet during the construction period. The hotel itself occupies the entire footprint of the site so in order to accommodate deliveries and offloading, the team first created a layby and traffic and pedestrian management system in liaison with the local council and their team. This was also coordinated with other large scale construction underway in the surrounding area to keep key city centre routes open throughout.
The local council wanted the hotel both to be a new local landmark- hence the elliptical tower design and distinctive blue external lighting in the city’s colours and also to set an example for sustainable and environmentally sound large scale construction so required BREEAM Excellent. Our efforts here were multi facetted. In order to achieve this high standard, we worked with Architect Stuart Keen to develop an intelligent design to maximise the performance of the building fabric itself. Next we undertook a detailed review with our Mechanical and Electrical Subcontractors, MD Enertech and Meridian Electrical, who bring to the table a huge amount of both specialist knowledge and modelling capabilities with market knowledge of the various specialist technologies which are designed in to improve the performance of the hotels systems. Lastly, we deploy a range of monitoring and management strategies throughout the actual construction process to reduce emissions, manage and recycle waste and liaise continually with the community. The result is a well thought out hotel which achieves the required standard without simply relying on expensive technological ‘add ons’ which would score the necessary points but increase capital spend and affect the overall profitability of the scheme for our client, something we always try to protect.
As a result of the hard work of the design team, all our colleagues involved and the continual support of our experienced supply chain, the finished hotel looks fantastic and certainly achieves the councils requirements to be a new local landmark. Take a look at a selection of the best images below. If you are struggling with similarly challenging sites or design requirements, please get in touch to discuss how we could help you too.
