BUILDING DESIGN &
CONSTRUCTION THE MAGAZINE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
ISSUE 166
ISSUE 166
GAZELEY COST EFFECTIVE
LOGISTICS SPACE
BUILDING DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION
ALSO INSIDE: CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD; FRAME UK LTD PARKSTONE GROUP; JOHNSON CONTROLS COLLINS CONSTRUCTION; E.ON ....and much more
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COST EFFECTIVE LOGISTICS SPACE
Gazeley is a global developer of logistics warehouses and distribution parks and is an expert in providing build to suit solutions
W
hen Gazeley was formed in 1987, sustainability wasn’t on the agenda for many companies. However, by combining environmental considerations with innovative methods from the outset, it has gained a reputation as being at the forefront of sustainable development in the warehouse distribution building development sector. Gazeley was a subsidiary of Asda/Wal-Mart until it was acquired by DP World of Dubai in 2008. Gazeley is now part of the Economic Zones World group, which has its headquarters at Jafza — the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai — and is a global developer and operator of economic zones, technology, logistics and industrial parks. Gazeley remains headquartered in London and has offices in Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan, Dubai and Shanghai. WAREHOUSE DEVELOPER The company is a global developer of logistics warehouse buildings and distribution parks and has so far developed over 6.4 million square metres of space throughout the UK, Europe, China and the Middle East. But what sets it apart from others doing the same thing are the way it undertakes its projects and the quality of the resulting product. Gazeley operates a lean business model, which means its worldwide headcount is under seventy. Gazeley sees its colleagues as part of a ‘virtual team’ — extended groups of specialist partners with whom it works on a repeat basis. Jonathan Fenton-Jones, who is Director of Procurement and Sustainability and has global responsibility, explains: “We work in partnership with teams of suppliers and vendors that support our business wherever we are. They can be lawyers, architects, engineers, main contractors, sub-contractors,
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local or regional authorities — really right across the spectrum of specialists and stakeholders with whom we are enjoying on-going relationships and repeat business. Very often, we’ll be with our team on day one, as part of the business-winning activity, working with our designers and contractors to shape up the offer and the promises we make to our customers.” He views the virtual team as a unique business model and the engine room of the business, enabling the company to scale to meet demand without having to increase the headcount. Many partners work with Gazeley almost continuously and have done so right since the start. RECYCLING LEARNING A benefit of the virtual team is that overhead costs can be kept in line with needs. However, Jonathan reckons the advantages are much more than that: “The key points for us are that we’re recycling learning. We’re continually innovating in terms of products and processes, and we’ve got the wherewithal to work with teams on an ongoing basis. We’re continuously innovating and carrying learning forward via project reviews at the completion of projects. Learning and knowledge is disseminated amongst our virtual team by capturing and embedding innovation in what we do for all our customers everywhere. “The fact is, because we’re working together continuously, these partners understand Gazeley’s way of working and how we go about offering products and services to our customers. Quite simply, we’re not a developer that walks away on completion of a building. We stay with our customers for the long-term.” Gazeley’s focus on the warehousing and distribution sector coupled with its partnership ethos results in it working on repeat business for a number
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Designers, Consultants & Installers of Automatic Sprinkler Systems, Hydrants, Hosereels, Fire Extinguishers and Suppliers of General Fire Equipment. Alpine Fire Engineers specialise in the warehouse and distribution sector and are proud to have worked with Gazeley on many successful projects.
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ALPINE FIRE ENGINEERS LIMITED Sovereign House, Bare Hill Street, Littleborough, OL15 9BL Tel: 01706 838 200 Fax: 01706 838 020 Email: d.smith@alpinefire.co.uk Web: www.alpinefire.co.uk
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of customers around the world. At the time it started, it was a unique way of working that subsequently became embedded in work the company did with the University of Reading. This resulted in the publication of ‘The Seven Pillars of Partnering’ and, although the company’s methods are being copied by others in the sector, its distinct culture cannot be copied. According to Jonathan, the model isn’t something that applies specifically to Gazeley’s own type of business. He says: “It’s not just a procurement model. It is a complete way of working, a culture which has behaviours, a mission, vision and values. It has a philosophy which informs how we work
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together with our own colleagues, with other members of the virtual team and with our customers.” PROMISES KEPT It does create repeat business for Gazeley. Jonathan believes this is important because the model generates profits not only for his own company but also for all members of the team. However, he believes a lot of repeat business is due to Gazeley sticking to its promises: “It’s absolutely clear from the feedback we get from our customers that the thing that matters more than anything else to them is that we do what we say we’re going to do. We deliver on time and to a high quality.
“What we recognise very clearly is that, for our customers, these aren’t just buildings we’re delivering. They represent significant business change. There are huge risks for our customers associated with delivering new, large-scale distribution facilities because of all that goes with them. It’s the people aspect of employment, it’s facilities management and the road miles associated with distribution. It’s a whole chain of interconnected activities.” A lot of the success is down to the suppliers; the virtual team and the way it’s organised. Gazeley operates a group of expert networks to which members of the virtual team contribute. These networks are split into seven areas that reflect key topics that
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SHEDS DEVELOPERS: GAZELEY are important to the company — offices, concrete, frame and envelope, project delivery, biodiversity and habitat, M&E and Gazeley’s corporate activities. As Jonathan explains, it’s what the members of the expert networks are asked to do that drives Gazeley forward: “Those networks are tasked with bringing forward a quick win every three months, an innovation every six months and a game changer. That, in effect, is how we inspire continuous innovation. When we bring things forward into our building specifications, that is the process they will have emerged from. It’s partly from the experience of recent projects but also very clearly the work of the expert networks in bringing the suggested innovation forward.” GAME CHANGERS The bringing forward of game changers has been vital in Gazeley’s development. Jonathan reckons that there are three that have significantly altered the playing field for the industry. The first of these was the partnering that started back in the late 1980s and has been fundamental to the way the company works. The second one was fast track development, which is now a Gazeley sub-brand known as G.Track. G Track is the means by which Gazeley can deliver a building of 400,000 square feet in twelve weeks from a standing start, which is significantly quicker than the competition. “That’s interesting for our customers,” remarks Jonathan, “because it spans the divide between them retrofitting an existing building and being able to have a new, bespoke facility in the same amount of time.” The third of the game changers was the development of eco template as part of Gazeley’s push for sustainability. The company is currently working on a fourth game changer that will embrace the very latest materials and technological advances.
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BARRY JACKSON ASSOCIATES Roofing and Cladding Advisory Service We are pleased to have worked with Gazeley for many years, helping to maintain and develop their external envelope HILLSIDE • SPARSHOLT • OXFORDSHIRE • OX12 9PY TEL: 01235 751630 • FAX: 01235 751318 EMAIL: admin@bj-assoc.co.uk • WEB: www.bj-assoc.co.uk
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SHEDS DEVELOPERS: GAZELEY A large part pf Gazeley’s focus since the very start has been the sustainable development and reducing the operation and maintenance costs of its buildings. It’s an area Jonathan became involved with shortly after joining the company in 1999 and he brought a design background and a passion for sustainability. The problem back then was identifying how warehousing and distribution facilities and the associated infrastructure could possibly be classed as sustainable, no matter how it was defined. At the time, Gazeley was at the vanguard of this type of activity in the sector and it put a team together that comprised virtual team members and others from outside. The outcome was the third of Gazeley's game changers, the Eco Template. The Eco Template set out an environmental road map of what the company could do differently in the immediate future, over a 12-18 month period and longer term over five years. This had to be achieved, as Jonathan comments, “without putting ourselves out of business on the way”.
WHAT WAS SEEN AT THE RADICAL END OF ECO TEMPLATE, THE FIVE-YEAR VIEW, HAS BEEN DELIVERED BY GAZELEY IN THE 2008 DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPANY’S CHATTERLEY VALLEY PROJECT NEAR STOKE-ON-TRENT
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ECO TEMPLATE What was seen at the radical end of Eco Template, the five-year view, has been delivered by Gazeley in the 2008 development of the company’s Chatterley Valley project near Stoke-on-Trent. This was the world’s first BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ rated facility at design stage under the then new BREEAM rating system. The building will have 100% of its heat and energy supplied through renewable sources with net export of energy, is the UK’s first carbon positive logistics building and exceeds the government’s climate change targets for 2020 and 2050. The BREEAM achievement resulted from a set of circumstances that included stipulations from the site owners. Jonathan explains: “They made very clear in their development brief, because we won the site in open competition, that the key driver for them was excellence in sustainability. This mattered to us as well because we saw ourselves at the forefront in delivering sustainable solutions. At the time, it was unusual to be acquiring a site on the basis of sustainability as a founding premise.” Many of Gazeley’s competitors now have some slant on sustainable development and the company itself has carried a lot of features through into other
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SHEDS DEVELOPERS: GAZELEY sites. These include a pet food manufacturing facility at Crick, Northamptonshire, for Butcher’s Pet Care and a major distribution centre for B&Q in Swindon. Another significant development has been for John Lewis at Magna Park, Milton Keynes. Gazeley worked with the client’s own teams and identified potential energy savings of £238,000 per annum. This represented circa 40% of the total energy use at 2006 prices and so was a substantial reduction. Telemetry and smart metering in the building has revealed that the value of the projected saving is being exceeded. “It’s a sustainable development but it’s a business benefit,” remarks Jonathan. What Gazeley is trying to do is change the language of sustainability, the mantra of which Jonathan believes is becoming tiresome for many. “We’re turning it into the language of business,” he says, “which is to make the business case first. It means that for all of our customers everywhere, our buildings are cheaper to operate, cheaper to maintain and they come with the green ticket at no extra cost. There’s no silver bullet; however, at the larger scale we’re facilitating a biomass fund, which we hope will deliver some quite large scale biomass facilities.” ENERGY SAVINGS The aim of the biomass development is to make power and heat available for Gazeley’s customers at less than grid-connected rates. There are also energy saving features that include lighting systems with movement detectors and daylight saving controls, lamp lives that are much longer than the industry norm and inverters on fan motors that prevent them spinning constantly. “It’s a whole range of different features,” comments Jonathan, “all of which are geared towards saving on operating and maintenance costs. Then there’s the fact that we know, from some very comprehensive life cycle assessment work that we’ve done, that we have choices in the materials that we specify in our buildings. We elect to specify materials that have reduced impact to earth’s ecology. In other words, pollutants to air, ground and water right through the manufacturing process.” Renewable technologies include solar thermal for the preheating of the hot water. There’s also solar PV as well as biomass, which counter the increasing cost of energy as well as the likely issues to do with future inse-
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chetwoods architects
“We believe passionately in buildings that people enjoy”
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Chetwoods (London) Ltd 12-13 Clerkenwell Green London EC1R 0QJ Tel: 020 74902 400 www.chetwoods-london.com
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Chetwoods (Birmingham) Ltd 32 Frederick Street, Birmingham West Midlands B1 3HH Tel: 0121 234 7500 www.chetwoods-birmingham.com
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Chetwoods (Leeds) Ltd 3rd Floor, Marshall Mills, Marshall Street Leeds, West Yorkshire LS11 9YJ Tel: 0113 234 6900 www.chetwoods-leeds.com
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curity of supply. However, Jonathan doesn’t believe the government is doing enough to encourage renewable energy development and is particularly concerned about the recent changes to the feed-in tariff system. FEED-IN TARIFF He says: “Unfortunately, the government decided to change the feed-in tariff mechanism for larger scale PV, which was not very helpful to the investor model that we were working with. Obviously, all our solar PV projects were at large scale on account of the fact that our buildings have large roof areas. For the third-party investor model, it made investing in solar PV on warehouse roofs much less attractive.” Jonathan is, in fact, of the firm view that business is invariably ahead of legislation on the construction side, irrespective of any changes to the building regulations. The advantage that Gazeley has is that, although it’s developing large footprint buildings, they don’t occupy the whole of the site. The larger scale sites often have areas that are not suitable for large buildings. As a result, the company is increasingly looking to develop localised power supplies for its sites. Gazeley is a company with a strong balance sheet and this has enabled it to survive the worst of the recession, although it did suffer a downturn along with everyone else during 2008 and 2009. However, Jonathan believes that in the UK there has probably been more take up of square footage in the years 2009-10 than ever before as standing stock has been taken up He does now sense an increased appetite for new buildings from Gazeley’s customers and sees plenty of opportunities for the company’s activities: “We are an international developer and part of the attraction for our customers in working with Gazeley is they get a product appropriate to the local market. But they’re high quality at attractive prices, no matter where in the world they are. For our major customers, it’s a most important aspect of our service.”
“WE ARE AN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPER AND PART OF THE ATTRACTION FOR OUR CUSTOMERS IN WORKING WITH GAZELEY IS THEY GET A PRODUCT APPROPRIATE TO THE LOCAL MARKET.” JONATHAN FENTON-JONES, DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY
Web: www.gazeley.com Tel: 020 79014455
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