Client: Manchester Airport
Main contractor: Multibuild Ltd
Architect: Leach Rhodes Walker
Details: 157 floorless bathroom pods for new Premier Inn at Manchester Airport
Value: £498K
Duration: March 2008 – March 2009
This project is one of RB Farquhar’s first two contracts for Premier Inn, the UK’s biggest hotel brand.
The contracts were awarded in 2008 following a factory visit earlier this year to RB Farquhar’s bathroom pod assembly plant in Chomutov, Czechoslovakia, by the Premier Inn design team and the construction team from main contractors Multibuild, at which final pod specifications were agreed and production quality standards inspected.
The Manchester airport hotel is being built to a tight 52 week programme, and Multibuild has altered its construction programme to take advantage of the time-saving elements of prefabricated bathroom pods. Originally each deck was to have been finished sequentially, but the plan is now to leave the construction of the central reception area to last, and to crane in the 1.2 tonne pods through the roof and down the central stair core, before wheeling them into their final position on each floor. Once all the pods have been craned into the building, the roof will then be secured.
Multibuild site manager Steve Ashton says that using pods is essential to the company achieving its 52 week construction and fit-out programme.
“Their (RB Farquhar) quality is second to none. When you have trades on site, you’re not sure whether the plumber has fitted one bathroom and his apprentice the next. When pods come out of a factory, you know that each has a consistent quality.”
