Job Centre Plus, Bournemouth

Job Centre Plus at Cotlands Road was selected by the Department of work & Pensions for their new State-of-the-Art Job Centre in Bournemouth. The Client’s brief was that the building had to achieve BREAAM Excellent status, as well as architecturally pleasing and on budget. Flexibility was key to the success of the project; future tenants as well as changes to the environmental equipment within the building had to be accommodated. Soft areas were also required to enable new staircases and lifts to be added at a later date.

The building which is curved in plan’ has flat floor plates to maximise flexibility for the building services systems and future office layouts. The surface water drainage from the site discharges to two large diameter pre-cast soakaways up to 5m deep. Green roofs minimise the intensity of rainwater run-off from the roofs into this soakaway system.

Previous uses of the site meant that significant investigations were needed to demonstrate that contaminants did not exceed those set out in government guidelines.