Les Mills – Lambton Quay
Client:
Les Mills
Location:
Lambton Quay, Wellington
The Lambton Quay gymnasium project is the fourth major project that Freear Philip Ltd has undertaken for Les Mills in the Wellington region over the past 12 years. The repeat business is testament to the confidence that Les Mills has in Feear Philip Ltd to meet their high expectations with respect to quality and project delivery.
Like previous projects for Les Mills the Lambton Quay fitout was completed within an extremely tight timeframe of just over three months. Les Mills had to vacate their existing gym on The Terrace as the building was being cleared to make way for a major new development. This left Les Mills to find a suitable, new premises and to transform it into a modern, gymnasium facility within a very short period of time. Freear Philip Ltd took up this challenge and through careful programming and good forward planning were able to deliver the Lambton Quay gym on time allowing Les Mills to open the doors at the new gym as the doors closed at The Terrace site. Early in the project critical lead time items were identified and ordered. This included an acoustic rated flooring system from the USA and flooring from Australia. Many of the fitout components were custom made and required long lead times. To ensure that the delivery of these components did not compromise the program the project team had to carefully determine precise dimensions for walls, floors and ceilings that had not yet been constructed.
The new gym was constructed within an occupied office tower. Consideration had to be given to minimise disruption to other tenants which included TVNZ who had their news studio in the floor above the new gym. Noisy works which would normally be carried out after office hours also had to be programmed around live news bulletins.
Member comfort is a significant focus for Les Mills. This provided further challenges at Lambton Quay to accommodate an extensive array of building services into a traditional office tower. The building services component of a Les Mills gym has a much higher level of complexity than a standard build. New air conditioning systems, hot water systems and state of the art audio visual systems had to be reticulated across four levels whilst providing a high degree of acoustic and fire separation.
Sustainable building practices were an important focus throughout the project particularly around waste minimisation and recycling. A suggestion to substitute a specified bamboo feature wall with recycled tawa T&G was well received by Les Mills. The tawa came from another Freear Philip project where a college squash court was being demolished. The tawa was recovered and machined into T&G panelling. The result was a striking feature wall from recycled material.
Achieving the tight timeframe was due in large part to the fantastic culture of enthusiasm and co-operation that developed early on in the project. The staff, suppliers and subcontractors all committed to the program and the high standard of finish that we wanted to achieve. There was many long hours, late nights and weekends worked by a dedicated project team in order to meet the deadline.
Freear Philip is very proud of its long association with Les Mills and with this Lambton Quay Gymnasium Fitout.
