Westport House

The redevelopment of the West Port site saw a very welcome replacement of an existing concrete clad monolith within Edinburgh’s city centre.

Location: Edinburgh
Client: Kenmore
Cost: £16m
Completion: 2008

The replacement building is circa 95,000ft2 of Grade A, open plan, modern office space. A key to unlocking the development was developing a slim but efficient structure in order to minimise floor-to-floor heights. The structure comprises a two-way spanning pot-tensioned, reinforced concrete floor slab system, resulting in a slab thickness of only 250mm with a column grid of 7.8m x 9.0m.

The design also included a basement for car parking and plant; a mix of contiguous piles and propped ‘kingpost’ arrangements have been utilised to form the walls of the basement.

Blyth & Blyth provided civil and structural services.

Key challenges

Results

“Edrington have worked with Blyth and Blyth for the past 15 years on various projects throughout the group and during this time we have developed a close and trusting partnership. B&B offer the full range of engineering services, allowing us to have a one stop shop on engineering consultancy requirements, with the obvious benefits this brings. B&B experience in the whisky industry is second to none which has the double benefit of not wasting time and money having to explain the process each time. As said previously, Edrington have been working with B&B for more than15 years and with a fair wind this relationship will continue for a further 15 years and beyond.”

George McKenzie Engineering Director, The Edrington Group