Written evidence submitted by Strategic Estates, House of Commons (RNR0013)
Proposals currently being prepared require works to the Northern Estate to be completed, including Richmond House, prior to a complete decant of the Commons part of the Palace. As well as refurbishment of Norman Shaw North, Norman Shaw South, 1 Parliament Street and Derby Gate, this will require temporary structures to provide additional accommodation within the secure boundary that currently bounds the Northern Estate. This is being extended to incorporate Richmond House. There will also be some additional works required to house ‘overflow’ ancillary functions that do not need to be within the secure boundary. The location for these has not yet been determined but this is within normal planning expectations, and would likely include 100 Parliament Street.
Currently, the target timeline for the works to the Northern Estate is as follows:
In broad terms, the dependencies are as follows:
It should be noted that the Northern Estate Programme is at a very early stage: designers have only recently been appointed, an Outline Business Case (OBC) has yet to be prepared and the construction works partner appointment is at an early stage. Once the works partner has been engaged, proposals will be developed for phasing of the individual buildings. This is likely to lead to the commencement and completion of individual buildings on a phased (but not sequential) basis. This in turn will allow these buildings to be reoccupied on a phased basis and the Commons decant chamber to be brought into use before refurbishment of all of the Northern Estate buildings is complete. The way in which this broad strategy will affect the timing of individual elements has yet to be established. Continued uncertainty on the direction of R&R creates greater uncertainty for the Northern Estate Programme as the engagement with stakeholders is diluted and deferred. Equally clarity on the R&R programme would create greater certainty for the Northern Estate Programme.
1 Cannon Row is being refurbished to include a Network Operations Centre and broadcast suite to allow these functions to be relocated from 7 Millbank, which is a leased building, into a secure location within the permanent estate. 1 Cannon Row will also house the new security operations facility along with some other ancillary functions and the retained gym. The project is not part of the Northern Estate programme, although it will house key elements of the estate wide resilient engineering infrastructure extending to the other Northern Estate buildings. Handover to the client/House is expected in 2019. There is no direct dependency with the Northern Estate Programme, although the aim, as with all projects, is to minimise overlap with Richmond House to manage congestion on this part of the estate.
The planned start and completion dates for these works are covered under the answer to question 1.
Target dates for completion of the Northern Estate programme were established prior to the development of decant proposals for the R&R programme. These proposals have focused on the need to keep decant accommodation for the House of Commons within the secure estate so that Members can travel to and from the decant chamber without passing through the public domain. The works to facilitate this on the Northern Estate are known as the R&R ‘overlay’. Additionally, proposals for the R&R overlay have addressed the recommendations of the Joint Committee for solutions that have a long term legacy value as much as possible, rather than being temporary in nature. While the emphasis of the brief is very much on value for money and the least burden on the public purse, the scale and scope of the Northern Estate programme has grown very considerably with the R&R overlay. Richmond House will now be refurbished for a full 30 year plus life, rather than just for the period of the NEP decant. The Richmond House refurbishment will include a chamber which could be used beyond the R&R programme, potentially providing a long term solution to the need for a contingency chamber within the secure estate. The need to introduce additional temporary structures to the Northern Estate to meet the decant needs of the Palace in full has put further pressures on the schedule.
When the Northern Estate schedule was rebaselined last autumn, the programme team, working with the Richmond House works partner considered that the Q4 2023 was still achievable taking into account Treasury recommendations on the levels of Optimism Bias (or contingency) that should be included. Since the rebaselining a number of events have drawn heavily on schedule contingency, thereby reducing the achievability of the target dates for Richmond House in particular. These have included the need to identify a location on the Northern Estate for decanted Committee Rooms, which at one stage saw Richmond House as the most viable location. Investigations into the impact of the considerably increased scale and complexity of environmental engineering systems needed to service the spaces, together with the heritage implications of these proposals[1] has had a major impact on the progress of the design. Additionally, more recently received survey data has confirmed that some critical dimensions of Richmond House are not in accordance with the drawings received from the Department of Health, which has caused significant redesign.
Going forwards, significant additional risks remain, including:
Strategic Estates is currently rebaselining the integrated schedule for the strategic programmes (R&R, Northern Estate, Archive Accommodation Programme and the Relocation Contingency Programme), taking into account all interdependencies in the period leading up to commencement of site works on the R&R programme. However this rebaselining would be of much more value when a decision has been made by both Houses on R&R. At the current time, the only assumption used is that the proposals of the Joint Committee (made in September 2016), are adopted. Any different decision, and indeed the timing so far, impact on the baseline plans.
The rebaselining will include a full evaluation of the Northern Estate programme, including Richmond House, taking in to account all known factors and risks, and looking again at realistic levels of Optimism Bias to cater for unknowns. The schedule will also attempt to anticipate some of the uncertainties associated with the R&R programme and in particular the schedule impact of a Decision in Principle that requires more than one option to be fully costed, which itself is likely to determine the point at which at start on R&R can take place, irrespective of the Northern Estate.
The timeline for the Northern Estates programme and decant from the Palace are addressed in the responses to questions 1 and 2.
At this stage, it is envisaged that proposals for the completion of the Northern Estate are likely to be developed on a phased basis. In particular, it is envisaged that this will allow the Commons decant chamber to be brought into use before the programme is completed and all of the buildings reoccupied. This would then support a phased decant of the Palace, allowing some works to commence before the decant is complete. In depth analysis of the phasing of the Northern Estate in relation to a construction methodology will be undertaken following appointment of the works contractor.
For a full decant from the Palace, decant accommodation would be required for both the Commons and the Lords. The decant for the Commons is covered under the previous questions. Any works required to a decant building for the Lords to make it suitable to house all necessary functions decanted from the Palace would need to be completed prior to a decant from the Palace.
At April 2017, there are 203 MPs accommodated in the Palace, and 406 MPs’ Staff. The nature of MPs’ staff is fluid and this figure is based on a working assumption of each MP having an average of 2 members of staff. If there were to be a full decant, all occupants including these MPs and their staff would need to be found other accommodation.
Additional floor space will be provided through the acquisition of Richmond House and any temporary buildings required within perimeter of the Northern Estate. This will all become part of the secure perimeter.
The Department of Health survey information given to the Richmond House team suggests the NIA of Richmond House is approx. 9210m2. As additional surveys are undertaken by the Richmond House team, this figure is likely to change.
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Regarding temporary buildings, the Northern Estate Design team have recently been appointed and are undertaking work to develop the initial concept design (RIBA Stage 2 brief). This will master plan options for the Northern Estate and assess what needs to be accommodated on the Northern Estate against how much space is currently available. This in turn will drive any decisions about temporary buildings or structures required.
Only after this work is complete will the design team start to work on plans for individual buildings and begin allocating the space between different users. However, this will be limited or stalled until a Decision in Principle, which would enable the required level of engagement with Members on understanding the required space and allocating it between different users. As outlined in Q2, uncertainty as to whether a decant solution will be adopted will also make it increasingly difficult to progress design proposals given the very significant investment in decant accommodation required and the increasing scale of abortive costs should this need to be abandoned or significantly modified at any point.
On the scenario that Richmond House becomes the House of Commons Chamber building, on current early designs it can accommodate 112 MPs and 224 MPs’ staff in addition to all the key services required around the Chamber (Members Lobby, Whips Offices, Front bench or Office Holder’s accommodation (including the Speaker’s and Deputy Speaker’s Offices), Central Lobby, public areas, procedural offices, catering, and so on). Engagement with Members is now required to identify the services that would be required within Richmond House rather than close by on the Northern Estate or elsewhere. Once this is fully scoped the final figure of Members and Member's staff accommodation will change up or down.
As part of the Northern Estate RIBA Stage 2 work referred to in question 6, options for accommodating the full provision of Members and Member's staff are being developed within the Northern Estate refurbishment, including new temporary or permanent infills (the latter if they would add real long term legacy benefit).
The House of Commons Accommodation Policy, last revised and agreed in November 2016 by the Administration Committee and noted by the House of Commons Commission, states:
The Administration Committee report on Accommodation, in 2006, stated: “...Members staff numbers constitute the greatest uncertainty as far as accommodation is concerned as well as one of the areas of greatest potential growth”. This continues to be true today. The Committee recommended that “Members should not expect to be able to accommodate more than two members of staff comfortably at Westminster”. Following the transfer of responsibility for paying Members from the House to the IPSA, the quality of data held on the number of Members’ staff on the estate has reduced”.
In line with the Administration Committee’s Report, agreed by the House of Commons Commission, the House of Commons will provide sufficient space for Members to have, on average, two members of staff. Variances around this average will be managed within Party space allocations and through shared desks for Members staff within individual Members’ offices should this be suitable.
The assumption therefore is for a minimum of two members of staff to be accommodated per Member. However, it is recognised within the House of Commons Accommodation Policy that this is an average and that there may be a requirement for more desk space. As such, any additional space close to but outside of Member's offices is being planned as additional Members’ Staff workspace.
The House of Commons Accommodation Policy states:
Members will have priority for accommodation in the Palace of Westminster and buildings close to the Chamber over others with no clear business need to be there. Should the Chamber move to another location then Members will have priority for accommodation close to that Chamber over others with no clear business need to be there.
With this policy in mind, the R&R Programme team is working with the Commons House Service to identify the services which have a clear business need to be near a temporary Commons Chamber and priority is being given to MPs accommodation. In some cases, teams do not need the full team to be located near the Commons Chamber but provide a ‘front desk’ function in a convenient location to Members with other staff accommodated elsewhere. The Commons House Service’s Ways of Working Programme is looking at ways to exploit developments in technology and digital to facilitate more flexible working which may in turn remove the need for a team to all be located together in one place and could also decrease the amount of space certain teams require close to the Chamber.
Services currently thought to have a clear business need for accommodation near a temporary Commons Chamber include security space, staff assisting visitors or working in the chamber - such as doorkeepers - and front desk functions for services provided to Members including procedural offices, library and any other member facing functions. Some form of catering provision will need to be located within the Chamber building, although the precise provision is still a developing brief.
As referred to in question 7, Members would be engaged with on the question of what needs to be located near a temporary Commons Chamber and would help shape how provision of services to Members is distributed in any decant buildings.
There are two groups of staff working on potential decant accommodation: R&R/NEP Programme staff that sit within the Parliamentary Strategic Estates team; and design teams who are under contract by Strategic Estates.
R&R/NEP Programme staff are drawn from different specialisms with both internal experience, from the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and external professional construction, design and surveying expertise. The team includes staff with financial business cases expertise, organisational development expertise, architects and engineers. House staff with a working knowledge of the House and its needs are working on the Programme, and closely with the business, to ensure the needs of both Houses are fully understood for any decant accommodation.
Design teams who are under contract to work for Strategic Estates are required to go through a period of ‘mobilisation’ before commencing any design work. Mobilisation activities are set by the Client – Strategic Estates – and acts as a preparatory stage for the consultants. These mobilisation activities include a set of briefings and tours of the work and needs of the House of Commons as well as other relevant induction workshops on the history and background of the Programme, parliamentary and programme governance, health and safety, and heritage to name a few. Consultants do not progress from mobilisation until the Strategic Estates is satisfied that the design teams fully understand the needs of the House and the brief.
The stakeholder engagement framework, established for the NEP and R&R Programmes, is the internal process within the two Houses’ administrations for agreeing the requirements of their relevant business areas in temporary accommodation. For the less complex NEP work consultation has taken place with the Members’ Working Group and Administration Committee among others. This ensures that staff at the most senior level of both Houses are reviewing all requirements and ensuring that they meet the business need. Member engagement will form a key part of the process of establishing design requirements for R&R, ensuring Members’ many and varied needs are captured and satisfactorily reflected in designs. The form which stakeholder engagement takes place will depend on the outcome of the debate, but plans are in place to enable an extensive stakeholder engagement process to begin immediately after the debate.
An ongoing study of comparative projects is progressing alongside the development of the R&R programme, comparative projects studied so far include:
Parliamentary:
The R&R Programme Team contacted a number of other Parliaments who are in the process of restoring their buildings in order to gather ideas and to share lessons learned. Four of the parliamentary programmes researched by the Programme Team (in Canada, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland) were driven by the need to replace infrastructure, in a similar way to the R&R Programme.
In Canada, refurbishment on several 19th and early 20th Century buildings on the parliamentary estate in Ottawa, involves the future relocation of both Chambers to temporary accommodation. In the Netherlands, it was proposed that all of the buildings should be closed at the same time in order to complete the work more quickly, requiring the relocation of both Houses of Parliament. Austria’s similar programme of works, also involves a full decant of its 19th Century Parliament building planned from 2017. Finally, in Finland, the Parliament building is currently closed for a major refurbishment, scheduled to finish in 2017.
Information and assimilating lessons learned were also looked at from the construction of new parliamentary buildings in the United Kingdom, including the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and Portcullis House.
Similar or comparable organisations:
Lessons relating to comparable large scale public sector programmes – including Thames Tideway, Olympic, Crossrail and HS2 – are being incorporated iteratively.
Further lessons learnt relate to option definition. As Tony Meggs, Chief Executive of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, recently told the Public Accounts Committee:
I think that … we are in what I would say is the select phase, which is where you create the series of options. At the end of the select phase, you make a very explicit choice about which option to pursue. When you have chosen an option, you go into the define phase, which is front-end engineering design and so on. As for where we are right now, perhaps slightly unfortunately, we would like to be at the end of the select phase, having chosen a clear option forward, but I don’t think that choice is necessarily completely made yet. I think it is really quite important to get to that choice before proceeding to great levels of detail. (21 February 2017, HC 1005)
The motion as drafted in the Joint Committee (JC) Report on the Palace of Westminster is a clear select decision, allowing work to continue on a single option. A decision to continue running multiple options and the lack of a point at which a single option has to be chosen, makes it difficult to predict when or how a single clear option will in fact be identified, although the eventual Resolution of the House may clarify that.
Specific lessons learned topic from other programmes | How these have been built into the R&R Programme |
Business Case – ensure a robust business case | Business Cases will be produced in line with Treasury Green Book guidance, supported by relevant consultants with business case experience. |
Risk - Adopt detailed risk analysis forecasts. Ensure estimated costs are fully comprehensive and include all possible activities associated with the programme. | The CAS consultants will provide professional risk and cost consultancy expertise to ensure that cost plans and risk analysis is fully integrated. |
Staffing and resources | A team including internal parliamentary staff supported by external consultants experienced in delivering large complex programmes is being set up. External peer review to identify potential problems, additional costs etc is deployed as required. |
Governance current - Importance of ensuring Governance is in place early with clarity over reporting mechanisms. | A management system in Strategic Estates has been established to manage the programme with clear lines of communication, roles and accountability |
Governance future - Strong, clear governance arrangements required throughout the project duration | A Delivery Authority to take on the delivery of the programme is being established. This will provide strong and clear governance arrangements and streamline decision making process. This two tier model proposed by the Joint Committee is a reflection of the lessons learned from the ODA. |
Work streams | Joint programme work streams are in place to inform the programme, stakeholders and external consultants on aspects of the project such as Health and Safety, Architecture, IT, Sustainability, Mechanical and Electrical Services, Security |
Stakeholder engagement - Staff engagement across board and external stakeholder and public engagement essential. Important to get support and ownership of programme from public and internal stakeholders. This is to include Champions across the board to engage with staff at all levels and keep all informed of developments through clear communications lines. | Senior Users and stakeholder groups are managed by Relationship Managers who are responsible for informing Users about the programme development, gathering of requirements and informing the design teams |
Communications | A comms team dedicated to managing communication internally and externally is established. It is working on public engagement. |
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The Perimeter Security Review to be carried out by Professor Sir Jonathan Murphy will begin 20th April 2017, with a likely interim letter on 30th April and a target final report by the end of May. The focus is on the perimeter security and as such we would expect it to support and refine much of the work that has already been targeted for tightened security of the perimeter - both before 2023 within the Palace and also as part of the Richmond House works over the forthcoming periods.
The current plans for R&R have had extensive input from security and we have relied on CPNI standards, which often run ahead of those employed in government departments in Whitehall
We would anticipate that throughout an extended period of building work that there may be changes to threat levels and to types of threat and therefore logically throughout the work there will be the ability to activate change control as there is in the current environment.
Brian Finnimore, Managing Director
[1] The Committee Rooms would need to be located in the historically significant Richmond Terrace part of the building.