It has been one year since work on Saïd Business School, University of Oxford’s new Global Leadership Centre first took place.
October 2022 marked the first anniversary of the start of construction on Oxford Said’s ambitious new Global Leadership centre, which is a recipient of the highly prestigious Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award 2022. In that time, the construction of the site has made significant progress.
Eleanor Murray, Associate Dean for Executive Education and Senior Fellow in Management Practice said:
‘There has been a tremendous amount of progress made toward constructing the Global Leadership Centre in the past year. It is exciting to see the project evolve and to know that with every stage of completion, we are a step closer to providing our executive participants with a world-class education in a new state-of-the-art building.’
The Global Leadership Centre has been commissioned to support high-level business and leadership education, with a range of formal and informal teaching spaces. It will also include 121 hotel-style bedrooms for executive accommodation, plus high-quality teaching spaces alongside leisure and dining facilities.
Andy Cowlishaw, from Graham, the construction company undertaking the building work said:
‘The team has worked incredibly hard this last year and delivered some outstanding work, not least creating a cofferdam in the Thames so we could repair the walls below the water line. As with any project of this scale, there have been challenges along the way, including safely dealing with the removal of a significant amount of asbestos from the old building. But our team took it in their stride. Work is now progressing in line with our programme - we are looking forward to starting on the new foundations in December - and we remain focused on handing over a truly outstanding building for the School in 2024.’
Since October last year, the building work has made good progress. All non-structural demolition has taken place, including the removal of walls, roof finishes and slabs, to open up the space inside. The retention work on the façade’s steelwork is nearly complete, alongside work to repair the west elevation of the building and south courtyard below water level.
Further highlights from the last year include:
- Completing the asbestos removal as it became identified
- Completing the removal of ground obstructions along the river elevation
- Striping out the old interior of the building
- Restoring brickwork and retaining period elements
- Creating a cofferdam in the Thames so we could complete the external wall repairs below the waterline
- Targeted demolition to make room for the new elements of the building is well underway.
The next key steps include completing demolition work in November and commencing foundation piling the new foundations in December.