Merlin Entertainments are Europe's Number 1, and the world's second-largest, visitor attraction operator. They operate over 100 attractions, nine hotels and three holiday villages in 23 countries across four continents and run some of the best-known names in global leisure.
These include the likes of SEA LIFE, Madame Tussauds, the Dungeons and LEGOLAND, as well as local icons such as Coca-Cola London Eye, Gardaland Resort, Heide Park Resort and Alton Towers Resort, and the objective at each is to provide a truly memorable experience and a great day out for all the family. All of which helps to cement their reputation as one of the world's leading leisure and entertainments companies.
Following our successful project management of Merlin's Poole head office and MBS Chessington upgrade we were appointed to manage Merlin's relocation to Basingstoke for their Finance team.
This property was a stand-alone building on Chineham Business Park that the landlord was planning to refurbish to a CAT A standard. Francis Hunter advised that Merlin take these CAT A works on themselves, with a landlord contribution, which following a detailed value engineering process and review of the landlords CAT A works allowed them to achieve a 25% reduction in their CAT B costs.
The tender process was a based upon a detail and build basis with Francis Hunter managing this with Maze Workplace so again allowing Merlin more surety in the project costs at an earlier stage.
Francis Hunter were reviewed the programme so that the 18,000sqft CAT A & B projects were completed in 12 weeks onsite.
We were employed in our usual project management, quantity surveyor and employers agent roles.
