Simply Cafod

9 December 2010

When your organisation’s mission is to Live Simply, it places peculiar pressures on the FM function. But Quentin Padgett has applied that principle in helping Cafod (Catholic Agency For Overseas Development) to create its London headquarters, 
in his role as facilities manager for the charity.

The new facility, Romero House in Lambeth, a five-storey, 33,000 sq ft building, was built on an old car park site owned by nearby St George’s Cathedral.

The building minimises its impact on the environment by producing around 20 per cent of the energy it uses, saving about £6,000 a year. The majority of its waste is recycled and Padgett has set up systems such as Follow-You printing where staff have to enter a PIN to get their print-outs.

Much of its furniture is from recycled products too: the chairs in the break-out areas are recycled PlayStations, recycled yoghurt pots make up the kitchen units, recycled coffee cups the kitchen surfaces and the meeting rooms chairs are made from recycled seat belts.

The comfy sofas in the canteen area come from the previous office and have simply been re-covered.

With an eye on Cafod’s overseas responsibilities, Fairtrade tea, coffee and sugar are standard in the kitchen, together with eco-friendly cleaning products. Many of the locations Cafod works in globally are adversely affected by climate change; the charity was determined not to make anything worse, says Padgett.

Community spirit
There is an undeniable sense of community at Romero House, (named after Oscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador who was shot dead while saying mass having spoken out against the country’s oppressive regime).

Living simply means sharing what you have with others – in this case, creating open-plan work environments which make it easier to interact and share knowledge and ideas. The only people in enclosed offices are the video editing team, for noise reasons.

Break-out areas and refreshments on split levels encourage people to meet colleagues from other teams.

The Pavilion on the top floor, which boasts views over London, is a place to relax, eat lunch, talk to colleagues and browse the small library where staff can borrow books on everything from Catholic social teaching to travel guides and self development.

Get on your bikes
The Live Simply philosophy also focuses on how people get to the building. At the old premises Padgett, who was FM at the Labour Party before joining Cafod seven years ago, developed a successful bike storage facility. It followed a staff audit which revealed that 5 per cent of the organisation’s carbon footprint could be attributed to staff’s commuting habits.

“We’d set ourselves a target of reducing our carbon footprint by 2.5 per cent each year and realised that supporting more sustainable travel options for our staff would help this.”
Twenty bike racks were installed (replacing four parking spaces), 
and the number of staff who cycled to work doubled to 22 per cent. Staff were also encouraged to walk, which also resulted in an increase (to 7 per cent). In the new building there are no parking facilities (except two for disabled badge holders) as the building is in the congestion charge zone but there is space for 50 bikes (plus shower and changing facilities) and the building is very close to Lambeth North tube station.

Material needs
The building itself is wedge shaped, cleverly fitted into a difficult site – another example of living simply.

Standing opposite, it’s hard not to make the comparison between Cafod’s green roof and that of the Peabody Trust’s head office next door which is covered in air handling equipment (all Cafod’s heat generating equipment is in the basement because it derives its heat from the ground).

The outside of Romero House is clad in a number of materials: untreated sweet chestnut, London stock brick, concrete, zinc and tiling, which represent a diversity echoed inside, with brick, concrete, wooden floors, galvanised steel and carpet all making an appearance.
There is a generous amount of meeting space inside, from 10 two-person meeting rooms (often used as quiet spaces for one person to work) to nine rooms holding between four and 20 people. The organisation also shares the 10,000 sq ft conference space next door – Amigo Hall – with the cathedral, which means it spends very little on meeting space.

The site was owned by the Diocese of Southwark, and the sale allowed St George’s to transform the Amigo Hall from a run-down church hall to a modern conference space.
As you’d expect in a religious organisation, there are quiet spaces. A fourth floor room is a quiet space to pray and reflect. Mass is celebrated every Wednesday morning in the Founders’ Room (which seats 12) and is said twice a day on weekdays in the cathedral next door.
The terrace, which stretches around the building and offers stunning views of the London skyline, is a quiet space in winter for staff to take phone calls but a buzzing social area in the summer.

Romero House is a world away from the charity’s previous premises which it had worked from for 28 years. The 270 staff were spread across three sites in Brixton, London, in a mixture of stock including a Victorian terraced building and a 1950s build with a 1980s extension – in space which was originally designed for 130. “They were challenging buildings,” says Padgett. “A third of the estate was listed and tricky to manage. All the services in two of them had come to the end of their life and we wanted to work in a more open-plan environment. The quality of the space was very low and disabled access was difficult.”

Long-term planning
The charity, which owned the Brixton premises, looked at various options for offices. Director Chris Bain, discovered that the Catholic St George’s Cathedral was looking to sell its adjacent site because its income as a car park had fallen since the congestion charge was introduced. “Selling to Cafod meant that the church retained a link with the site,” says Padgett.
The land was purchased in early 2008 and Cafod tendered the work to four architects, eventually choosing Black Architecture because of its sustainable design and credentials. “We wanted a sustainable building and one we could stay in for a long time,” says Padgett. “We were long-term in our costings which allowed us to choose very sustainable systems with a long payback.”

A team comprising Padgett and the HR and finance directors was set up, together with an internal staff group of 20 move champions, with the support of assistant FM Byron Jackson. They worked to cut filing by roughly a half in advance of the move and talked through 
the cultural change implications 
of working open plan.

The building was handed over to Cafod in March this year and the move itself took place over two weekends in May. The servers which support international offices were up and running within three hours. Staff moved in on 10 May and the site was officially opened by Archbishop Vincent Nicholls on 15 July. The new building has the same running costs as the previous premises, but at a much higher quality of provision and lower environmental impact.
“We didn’t want to appear as if we’d spent too much, or to look like a flash corporate building. We aimed to create an environment for staff and visitors that would enable them to perform at their best.”



CAFOD: A GREENER WAY OF OFFICE LIFE
Romero House is heated and cooled by highly efficient energy pumps connected to eight boreholes dug 125m into the earth. The atrium and office windows maximise daylight, reducing the need for artificial lighting (which takes advantage of movement sensors in certain areas), while roller blinds and the external louvres control glare and shield the building.
A natural green sedum roof increases biodiversity by encouraging plants and insects to make it their home, and rainwater collected from the roof is used for toilet flushing. Aerated taps and low water-use fittings mean less water is used overall.

The roof-mounted solar panels generate 3,500kWh per year, saving the equivalent of two tonnes of C02. A solar hot water heater provides all hot water. It is double glazed throughout with self-cleaning glass, which Padgett, admits “still needs cleaning, just not as much”. The concrete’s thermal mass stores energy from the ground source system at night to offset the heating or cooling loads the next day.

The windows open using winders, supplying fresh air during autumn, spring and summer. During the winter, air is supplied by floor grilles which means staff don’t have to open windows. Trench heaters deliver heat through the floor to offices. The building temperature is kept at around 22-23° throughout the year but rose to 26° over the summer when external temperature hit 32° – still an impressive feat. Padgett is making some tweaks to the layout to further improve air flow. On one floor the storage units are too high which means that air isn’t circulating properly.

There are recycling bins in the kitchen and office areas, which recycle flatpacked cardboard, paper, envelopes, plastic bottles, empty aerosols, tin cans and glass jars. In each break-out area there are small green-lidded bins for compostable waste (tea bags, coffee grounds, fruit skins and cores and vegetable peelings). All of this has helped Romero House achieve a Breeam ‘Excellent’ rating.


FM quick facts

20%
of Romero House’s energy is produced internally saving Cafod about £6,000 a year

22%
of Cafod’s staff now cycle to work after 20 bikes racks replaced four parking spaces

7%
The amount of staff now choosing to walk to work


Architect: Black Architecture
Project Cost: £11.5m, which includes land, construction, fit-out and all equipment and furniture, moving costs and fees for the disposal of the old buildings plus fit-out of the Amigo Hall for Cafod areas. This was funded by selling the old premises (£5m) and by the charity’s contingency fund
Size of site: 33,000 sq ft
Desks: 350 workstations for 270 staff
Access: 7.30am-7.30pm Monday to Friday; weekends by arrangement
Maintenance: ErgoPlus
Cleaning: Principle Cleaning
Catering: Master Catering (also used by St George’s Cathedral)