Issue details
Approval of Main Contract budget and Furniture Fixtures and Equipment budget to finance the fit out of the Shell Store – January 2021
The Shell Store incubation centre project has
materially completed construction, the building was handed over to
the council in September 2020. There are currently a number of
snagging and small scale works being undertaken on the building by
the main contractor, Barnwood.
Barnwood and Mace, as the council’s appointed project
manager, are liaising in relation to these snagging and small scale
works.
In August 2020 a decision was taken to approve budget expenditure
against a number of items including the allocation of £50,000
from the Fixtures, Fittings and Equipment budget towards the
procurement of items to fit out the Shell Store café and
reception areas. The works to the café and reception are now
materially completed.
There is a need to undertake the fit out and installation of a
number of other items within the building that will be material to
its operation and marketability.
These works include relatively significant expenditure on
telecommunications equipment alongside several, more minor work
requirements.
The telecommunication works requires the installation of
communication equipment and wifi to serve all the separate offices
and the associated support facilities – meeting rooms and
reception. New communication equipment is required to make the
links from the fibre input to the Shell Store comms room and all
the individual rooms. This will enable each tenant to have their
own secure connection and their data usage can be monitored and
charged for.
Additional work is required on the wifi network to ensure that it
is available throughout the building and that occupants can move
from office to atrium and other spaces with the same connectivity
and security. The cost for undertaking this work is estimated by
ITS, the Enterprise Zone communications contractors, to be:
£135,000.
This work is considered essential for the building to be able to
attract the high quality businesses that form the target occupants.
Given the specialist technical requirements required to install the
wifi network the work is outside the specification of the main
contract budget. Inclusion of high quality communications within
the building was a consideration within the business case and the
project budget of £7.315m. This work will not lead to an
extension of the existing project budget and can be managed within
existing budget lines as demonstrated in the finance section below.
The Programme Board recommended that a detailed and separate
procurement exercise is completed to commission this work and a
delegated budget of £135,000 is set aside for this
purpose.
In addition to this relatively significant expenditure Mace have
advised that a certain amount of fit out of the atrium and public
areas of the building will be required, this has been confirmed
with operators of similar facilities. There is a collective need to
purchase items such as, but not limited too, security lockers for
users, TV’s for use in the reception heritage pod, and public
areas, furniture to facilitate ad hoc meeting space within the
atrium, furniture to equip meeting spaces, furniture for the
conference facility etc. An appropriate procurement exercise will
be undertaken to purchase each of these, and any other, required
items.
Individually many of these items will be at a relatively low value
and requiring individual budget approvals for each is not
considered an appropriate use of officer resource. It is
recommended that £50,000 from the Shell Store fixtures,
fittings and equipment budget is delegated to the Project Manager
in consultation with the spend manager against the above listed
items, and any others that the Project Manager and Project Lead
considers appropriate.
The building has the infrastructure to accommodate up to four
electric vehicles charging points, the charging points themselves
are not yet installed and were outside the scope of the
construction commission. The installation of the charging points
will assist in the achievement of BREEAM points which determines
the overall BREEAM rating of the building. Estimated cost for the
installation of two chargers providing four charging points is no
more than £10,000. The Programme Board recommend that a
suitable procurement exercise is undertaken to install the charging
points and that a budget of £10,000 is set aside for this
purpose from the Fixtures Fittings and Equipment Budget.
Approval of expenditure against budget will based on
recommendations from the Shell Store Project Manager/Project Lead,
and where appropriate consultation with the Programme Board.
Decision type: Non-key
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Notice of proposed decision first published: 27/01/2021
Decision due: 27 January 2021 by Director of Economy and Place (Historic)
Contact: Nick Webster, Economic development manager Email: nwebster@herefordshire.gov.uk Tel: 01432 260601.
Decisions