John Varvatos
Project Overview
Project: Fit-out of retail unit
Client: John Varvatos
Contract value: Undisclosed
When American contemporary menswear designer, John Varvatos, opened his first European store in Conduit Street, London, Daniel Connal Partnership was delighted to be appointed to provide CDM services and act as Fire Risk Assessors on the project.
The 10,000 sq.ft unit, in the heart of prestigious Mayfair, is the Varvatos brand’s biggest store to date world-wide and is located over three floors of a 7 storey building – including a ‘Man Cave’ in the basement.
At the same time as the Varvatos fit-out was taking place over the basement, ground and first floors, an entirely separate construction project was in progress on the four upper floors of the building, controlled by the occupier of those floors. Deliveries on the busy central London street were restricted and the only access to the building was from the front.
DCP’s experienced health & safety team ensured that temporary fire detection and alarm procedures interconnected both sites and put in place arrangements to control and co-ordinate deliveries for both projects during unrestricted hours. With a single point of entry from the street, we also negotiated and agreed separate routes for access and deliveries for each construction project.
John Varvatos, Conduit Street, W1
Our Fire Risk Assessment considered how evacuation procedures from the upper floors, outside out client’s control, could be arranged and we negotiated refuge points at basement and first floor levels.
The success of this co-operation and the measures we put in place allowing the two building projects to take place at the same time ensured that over the 5 month project, there were no incidents or accidents causing expensive delay or inconvenience and, despite the works continuing on the upper floors of the building, the John Varvatos store opened to the public as scheduled.