Sustainable head office, Hoddesdon

The building provides 34 000 sq ft of space on 3 floors (including basement) along with car parking and high quality landscaping.

The internal space includes a dedicated reception area, cellular offices to the inner edge, flexible, open plan office space to the wings, training rooms, canteen area, gymnasium, coffee and printing stations, lift and stair access, plant room and ancillary and storage space.

The elevations include low maintenance brickwork cladding, solar shading (metal primary framework with Western Red Cedar louvres), perforated metal fins to east-west elevations, thermally broken aluminium windows and high performance single ply roof membrane.

Part of the brief was to achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent' and to incorporate as many sustainable features as possible.

These sustainable features include:

• Orientation of the building to achieve maximum natural daylighting to all workstations
• Ground source heating and cooling
• VRF fan coil air supply to offices with localised control
• Increased thermal mass
• Efficient external solar shading
• Solar thermal water heating
• Water saving taps and grey water systems
• Photovoltaic brise soleil
• Internal lighting with daylight saving control
• Sustainably sourced materials
• Reduced building energy consumption

The completed project provides a pleasant working environment for VolkerFitzpatrick's head office staff, with efficient and flexible floor layouts and reduces carbon emissions for their head office operation by some 70%.

Key Points

• New Head Office Building
• BREEAM Excellent rating
• Sustainable features include
• Solar thermal hot water system
• Photovoltaic brise soliel
• Ground source heat pumps
• Ground air ventilation to basement
• "Intelligent" power system