Old Royal Naval College, World Heritage Site, Greenwich

Diamond Interior Contracts were very happy when invited to carry out further work for the University of Greenwich. This time we were asked to complete maintenance work and upgrades at the historic Greenwich campus. Incredibly, the Greenwich campus is located in buildings called the ‘Old Royal Naval College’ which is a World Heritage Site by the river in London, described by UNESCO as being of "outstanding universal value" and reckoned to be the "finest and most dramatically sited architectural and landscape ensemble in the British Isles". The buildings were designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built between 1696 and 1712, originally as a hospital site and then used as a naval college. To say it is a ‘privilege’ to be invited to carry out construction work and refurbishment at such a historic and world-renowned site is probably an understatement.

What work did Diamond Interior Contracts carry out at the Greenwich campus:

In a unique assignment, the University required a “Moot Room”. This is essentially a mock court room where students can experience the feel of being in a real court room and develop their court room skills. At the time of our contract students were unable to attend real life moot cases due to Covid-19, so our task was to set up the Moot Room such that the University could stream real cases to a large screen in the room, a clever way of continuing to provide students with this valuable legal experience.  

Completing the Moot Room required our team to:

• build a supporting wall and install a 4800mm x 3000mm” screen plus all the AV equipment
• decorate the Moot Room in Dulux Heritage colours 
• carry out enabling works for other trades e.g. uplifting floors to enable the electricians to lay their cables, build a new services cupboard to house the AV equipment.

Additional work to refurbish the Queen Anne Building:

• Decorate all rooms and corridors on two floors (circa 4000m2 of walls and ceiling) plus complete all the joinery throughout.  
• In some of the lecture rooms we installed new acoustic wall panelling, and re-configured some of the existing panelling.
• Install insulation in approximately 2,000 square metres of (very hot!) loft space using 200mm loft roll.

Experienced project management was vital for this project:

Not only are the Baroque buildings of historical significance but the buildings as well as the grounds are open to the public and are one of London’s most popular visitor attractions, receiving over 1.2 million visitors every year so the logistics of this job were not to be under-estimated. Add to that the pressures of the site being located in central London and summer tourism plus the presence of any college staff or students. Add to that major supply chain issues following the global pandemic and the Suez Canal being closed for 6 days, it was clear that successful completion of this project would rely heavily on the decades of experience in construction project management as well as excellent people skills at Diamond Interior Contracts.

Results:

• All project tasks were completed in eight weeks
• The project was completed on time, before the deadline i.e. start of Autumn Term 2021 
• The project was completed on budget
• The client was delighted. 

Repeat work has since been agreed and Diamond Interior Contracts look forward to being back at the University of Greenwich to embark on the refurbishment of three music rooms in the King William Building.