King's Cross Central: Argent's major (Special report on regeneration)

Argent's 20-year revelopment of King's Cross Central will open up 27 forgotten hectares of London to a new generation of workers, residents and visitors. Helen McCormick talks to construction director Tony Giddings about how this epic project will be built.

Tony Giddings seems completely unfazed by the vast building project that he will personally oversee for the next two decades. Argent’s construction director radiates enthusiasm and excitement for the King’s Cross Central scheme, peppering his conversation with such cheerful words as ‘marvellous’, ‘fantastic’ and ‘wonderful’ as he takes CJ around the dilapidated site.

Giddings’s experience is impressive – he has already delivered a huge regeneration project for Argent in the form of Birmingham’s Brindleyplace. Purchased in 1993 as 7ha of wasteland, Giddings and his team spent the next 11 years transforming the site into a stylish business and public space.

“I lived and breathed that project, so I’m used to the long haul,” he says. “This is going to be more like 15 to 20 years, and I really would love to stay with it to the finish.”

King’s Cross, however, is on another scale altogether. The 27ha development will cost more than £2bn and will create 750,000 m2 of mixed-use development. This will include: 20 retained and restored historic buildings; 50 new buildings; 20 new streets and 10 major new public spaces; 50 eateries; 50 arts and music venues; and 1,946 homes, 40% of which will be affordable housing.

It will also have the best transport links in London. King’s Cross is already served by six London Underground lines, as well as by Thameslink and other mainline rail services, including links to the largest four London airports. Once the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) is up and running, the area will also boast direct high-speed links to France and the rest of Europe.

“Once we have finished here, the idea is that all the people arriving by train, rather than immediately leaving the area as fast as possible, as is the case today, will want to stay,” says Giddings.

Running the show

His confidence in the project’s smooth delivery may stem from the fact that Argent is determined to maintain full control of the process, from appointing the contractors (both main and trade) to the security arrangements on the finished site.

The company’s considerable financial clout can only help. The site is owned by CTRL owner London and Continental Railways (LCR) and logistics giant Exel. Argent, which is effectively the client, is fully owned by the British Telecom Pension Fund.

“We are very lucky as a developer to have that sort of backing,” says Giddings. “We will probably fund most of the work with bank finance, but to have that reassurance behind us is just phenomenal.”

After six years of planning and bureaucracy, the construction phase can at last begin. Giddings has taken a back seat until this point. “I am focused on the delivery side, while my colleagues have handled the planning and the politics.”

There was plenty of the latter, exacerbated by the fact that the site straddles two councils. The majority of the site – more than 25ha – falls within the London Borough of Camden, but the so called Triangle Site, just 1ha, is in Islington. “Both councils have been carefully supportive, although concerned about the various pressure groups they have had to work with,” says Giddings. “The planning process is becoming harder and harder to achieve, particularly the requirements set out in Section 106 agreements.”

Personal touch

Achieving these requirements, which include providing a certain amount of housing in proportion to the commercial space – including affordable housing, as well as trainee and apprenticeship schemes – will mean close working relationships with contractors. For this reason, Giddings intends to hand-pick the teams.

“We’re talking to Edmund Nuttall about the civils side,” he explains. This includes all the infrastructure, such as drainage, water and gas, combined heat and power (CHP) units, the building of new roads and the rerouting of others, including Pancras Road.

“On the building side, I have worked closely with Carillion and HBG at Brindleyplace, as well as on projects in Reading and Manchester,” he adds. “I’ve also got to know Kier well. I’m really keen to work with just three main contractors. We’ll negotiate projects with them, with perhaps limited competition between the three of them.

“Contracts will be on a design and build basis. We have worked on that basis on all our projects over the past 20-odd years.”

The first step is to bring in concept architects –Argent has got 26 looking at different buildings on the King’s Cross site. “When it gets to the building stage, the contractors will bring their own design teams in, as well as their own M&E and structural consultants. They will take the detailed design through to construction, although our architects will stay on board to make sure the original concept is not too compromised.”

Bringing everyone together in this way is essential, adds Giddings. “We had a partnering/collaborative way of working with contractors long before Latham was talking about it. In a project of this size, it’s absolutely essential.

“Construction now is not merely talking about building something, it’s about bringing all the designers together, having a team that functions well, learning lessons from one project and bringing that to the next.

“I don’t want a situation where we’re talking to a brand new contractor each time; I want contractors that feel they are part of this whole development. The three that I’m talking to fit that bill, and I want them to have design teams and supply chains that they’re comfortable working with.”

Giddings will also be closely involved in the selection of subcontractors. “We’ve worked with a number of key trade contractors in the past. The idea is to try and create teams of certain trade contractors who work happily with the main contractors. We want to get everyone involved along the whole supply chain at the earliest possible time, working on a repeat basis.”

Giddings believes this will help to avoid any confrontation. “Ultimately there is a contract that is there as protection for them and for us, which you put in the bottom drawer and hope you never have to look again.

“I’m trying to create an atmosphere of profit share as well, whereby we set budgets for the building, and if we achieve better than that, the savings get shared with the contractor and consultants, with bonuses for the trade contractors as well if they achieve their programmes.”

Ownership of buildings will also be shared. “Our intention is not to sell the development off as individual buildings,” explains Giddings. “What we’re hoping to do is to create a co-ownership vehicle with funds and other major investment companies, as we did at Brindleyplace, a bit like buying shares.”

Risky business

This ethos of shared benefit comes with one of shared risk. Argent’s philosophy is that risk should be borne by the expert in that particular area. “We recognise that development’s a risky old business, and as far as possible we’ll take the risk in terms of planning and what the yield shift might be on sales and what rental might be achieved.

“But when it comes to construction costs and the risks associated with construction, while we work with the contractors to mitigate the risks as far as possible, ultimately it will rest with them, as they are in the best position for risks pertaining to design, procurement and so on.”

This means that Argent’s own project management team can be kept very tight. “At the moment it’s just me and a few others. We don’t do construction management, which is why we can stay small – we look to the consultants and contractors to bring in that expertise.

“This doesn’t mean we’re not very hands-on; we’ll award all the work and keep control completely. As it progresses, we are going to have to build up our own project team quite substantially. But we don’t want to become a Mace or a Stanhope and have huge volumes of people. There are only 36 of us in the whole of Argent, and I can see it reaching a peak of perhaps 50.”

Argent will remain closely involved with the running of King’s Cross Central long after the development is complete. This includes keeping the area safe and secure for the visiting public.

“The management of it is so important, in other words the security, the cleanliness, the maintenance, the asset management. We’re going to have a fantastic set up of management here from day one,” enthuses Giddings. “This is a public space, with cafes, restaurants, a square with fountains, very much part of London. This of course means there will be normal police around, but we want to supplement it with our own people, not just for security, but for giving directions and keeping everything working smoothly. Argent will stay involved for the foreseeable future once it’s built.”

The development is likely to happen in three or four phases. One of the first areas to be completed will be the transformation of the imposing Granary building into the new campus of the University of the Arts.

“We are delighted to be retaining that, and the University is very excited by the project,” says Giddings. “There will need to be considerable landscaping to ensure they don’t feel they’re in the middle of a construction site.”

Blending old and new

At the moment, the whole site is a wilderness of abandoned buildings, a vast forgotten and largely unused wasteland in the middle of bustling north London. But there are flashes of beauty, including elegant Victorian buildings, railway turntables and even the remains of a Dickensian film set. It is difficult to imagine these dilapidated buildings restored to their former glory, or envisage the new flats and offices, and open squares dotted with fountains, cafes and tourists.

But Giddings certainly can, and is clearly excited at the prospect of creating a 21st century landmark that keeps some of the character of the original architecture. He enthusiastically describes the cafes and bars that will one day flank the old Fish and Coal building, which curves elegantly to follow the line of the canal and is delighted that the latter will be transformed from a dark and forbidding alley to an open public space.

“While we are keen to preserve the history of the area, I think preservation can be taken too far. Some of the buildings are stunning and will enrich the development, but I’m not sure every single bit of so-called heritage should be kept – there are some things which really aren’t that great and don’t fit in with the master plan. The Victorians certainly didn’t worry about that, they went ahead and flattened huge swathes of Tudor housing and built what they needed.

“Here we are in the 21st century and we have to retain everything. But we will make it work, old and modern together. King’s Cross is a fantastic opportunity to create our own heritage.”

[Contract Journal, 15 November 2006, p 26-27]