Work on this £135 million project included the structural refurbishment of the existing 11-storey commercial office building, as well as the installation of new cladding, construction of three new office floors and a new reception. Internally there was a structural refurbishment and mechanical, electrical and public health (MEP) fit out to a category A standard.

The challenge

This was a challenging project with ambitious sustainability goals. Some unexpected challenges, exacerbated by starting the project at the height of the Covid pandemic, included setbacks in planning approvals, cladding production delays and design issues that required the redesign of sections of the plant room.

The solution

Through strong collaboration with the customer, bringing our extensive experience of refurbishing similar buildings, we were able to reduce the embodied carbon of the building early in the design stage.
The team worked quickly to find a solution to the plant room design issues and within two weeks a new design was approved, the steel was delivered to site and the project was back on track.
Our health, safety and wellbeing experts created a hazard intervention system for the project using a QR code to report anything on site that didn’t feel safe. This electronic reporting method sped up the time taken between identifying and reporting hazards so potential problems could be rectified more quickly.
Internally, we installed plant on the roof, new plant rooms in the basement and installed and commissioned a range of systems. These included electrical plant, lighting, heating, ventilation, data and IT systems (equipped with smart technology) and the lifts.

The outcomes

Reducing the carbon footprint of the project was prioritised from the outset. Carbon reduction measures included resilient recycling which meant 99.83% of waste was diverted from landfill and the use of a green utility tariff that saved over 550 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. In all, the team was able to reduce the carbon footprint of the construction stage by over 10,200 tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent to 3,800 return flights from London to Sydney.

Now complete, YY London is an all-electric, sustainable building that features cutting-edge green technologies and practices that significantly reduce its carbon footprint. It has achieved:

BREEAM Outstanding – including extra credits for producing minimum waste
WELL-Platinum
SmartScore Platinum, as a digitally connected and future-ready building.

The project won first place for Reconversion Project of the Year in the GRI Awards Europe and was shortlisted for Decarbonisation Project of the Year.

yylondon.com/the_building

YY London, 30 South Colonnade

The project

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