Astellas, London

Meeting budget challenges on award-winning HQ office refurbishment and fit-out

• Successfully managed previously unforeseen work on plant replacement to deliver the project on budget
• Finished building extremely well-received by staff and won BCO award for “Best Fit-Out for Workplace”

With plans for a comprehensive refurbishment and fit out, pharmaceutical company Astellas bought the freehold of a 12-year-old, 10,000m2 building to use as its new EMEA headquarters.

Once redeveloped, the Foster + Partners-designed building in Surrey would enable it to consolidate its UK functions into one building and showcase its brand.

Drees & Sommer UK put together a team to work on the building redesign, construction and consolidation.

Subsequent to the project’s budget being fixed, it was discovered that the central plant was in a worse state than expected and needed replacing.

Rising to the challenge, Drees & Sommer applied a rigorous value engineering process on both the MEP installation and the building fabric/fit and were able to deliver the project to the original budget.

The finished building not only enthused staff and promoted Astellas into the top division of pharma companies but also won “Best Fit-Out for Workplace” 2013 in the British Council for Offices awards.