Refurbishment and Modernisation Works, Royal Albert Hall

FFT is delighted to have been appointed to provide a range of professional and contract administration services, undertaking various redecoration and refurbishment projects within the prestigious Royal Albert Hall.

Working alongside the Projects Team, our brief involves overcoming the challenging logisitcs of specifying and managing works within an architecturally unique, world-class building which hosts major events 364 days of the year.

The Project

Faithorn Farrell Timms were commissioned by the Royal Albert Hall to undertake a Condition Survey. The primary use of the results would be to ascertain the budget required to maintain the unique Listed building for the next ten years.

Our Role

We were required to develop a survey strategy to enable the data to be collected in such a way that it could be used for numerous other tasks, which were yet to be decided on by the Hall.

We would also be responsible for merging the data collected by the M&E consultant into our dataset to produce a consistent globalised dataset.

The Challenges

The Royal Albert Hall is highly-maintained Grade I Listed building. We had to develop a unique way to collect and display the data, as many listed items would be beyond their recommended end of life.

Access to many areas is restricted due to the busy event schedule and the associated preparation required. We therefore needed to collect the data in a very efficient manner that would require minimal validation time.

Due to the unique nature of the Hall, it has many categories for use from loading areas, catering, artists’ area, front and back of house areas with the finishes ranging from new installations to 150 years old.

The Solution

We developed a survey template based on a pilot survey with pre-populated datasets. The datasets could be amended as necessary and rolled out instantly to the Surveyors, to allow for consistent data collection and to provide a bespoke system designed for the multiple uses of the Hall.

Added Value

We developed a custom-made App for the Royal Albert Hall which included the pre-populated datasets making the capture of data efficient and consistent. Without this, it would have been difficult to collect the data at a high enough quality in such a short space of time to fit in with the Halls delivery requirements.