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• Projects
• World-leading management consulting company

Appointed as Project and Cost Managers for the expansion of their flagship Russian headquarters in Moscow, this world-leading management consulting company had a clear idea about what they wanted. The full project cycle was 13 months, and this included the design tender, the General Contractor tender, the furniture tender and a moving company tender. This as well as the initial technical due diligence examination and report and overall construction supervision comprised our scope for this client.

In order to first choose a design team, the client representatives visiting from London wanted to visit completed projects from each of the bidding architects, engineering designers and General Contractor candidates. Particular attention was paid to the acoustic and sound insulation issues of all rooms, as the client had very high standards.

The kick-off meeting with architect and designers of engineering systems was held in the middle of January 2017 and the process of designing and developing the concept of new office began. According to the client's request, the new office should be comfortable and cozy for employees, and also boast the best in modern design and technical equipment. The designed concept was generally open plan, but to maximise the use of available daylight all meeting rooms were moved to the core of the building. As the business model of this client required strict confidentiality and invividual consultants were used to having secluded officespace, many internal meetings were held with the different divisions of the company to illustrate how these goals could be met while maintaining a general openplan concept.

A significant factor in the design was the quantity of meeting rooms with the video conferencing. Also, each partner's office was to be equipped with audio-video equipment for conferences and meetings for a minimum of four people. To realize this request and design layouts with audio and video systems, the American company Waveguide was involved in the project and a separate tender was held to supply and install IT/AV equipment, the winner of which was Terralink. This amount of audio-video equipment significantly influenced the architectural design, as the client expressed a desire that all monitors and video cameras be embedded in wooden frames, and the wires and the switches are hidden, but with the ability to access at any time. As a result, the architectural design increased the amount of custom made furniture. It should be noted that in the framework of this project, a large number of wooden products were custom made: a timber ceiling made of precious wood, a podium in the worklounge area from the Portuguese parquet Sakupira, facade wooden panels from floor to ceiling along the perimeter of doorways etc. A separate wish of the client was to design comfortable rooms for rest and sleep (nap rooms). All these ideas and solutions helped to create a progressive, modern office with cosy zones as close to home as possible, so that employees could occasionally relax.

Strict business centre lighting requirements meant that we had to tread a fine line in choosing an innovative lighting solution while ensuring the landlords requirements were met. That, and the highly demanding acoustic protection requirements were the key challenges the design team faced.

In June 2017, a kick-off meeting was held with the winner of the general contractor tender GINT-M. Thanks to the well-coordinated work of the general contractor team, the main work was completed in six months and right after the New Year holidays the client moved into their world standard new office.