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GSL as leaders of the Stratus consortium won the contract to manage the relocation of several Met Office sites to one new location in Exeter by March 2003. The contract was to design and build the new Head Office and provide support services.

The project is valued at £150 million including construction costs and operating support services. This project was one of the biggest IT moves in Europe, and saw 1,150 staff move from their existing premises – several buildings in Bracknell – to one new 57,000 m2 headquarters on the outskirts of Exeter. Estimated operating costs will be a little under 60% of the Met Office’s previous annual operating costs.

 

Construction

The Met Office's old headquarters building in Bracknell had become inflexible, did not meet needs and was costing a huge amount to run. It was decided that a new building was required. Construction of the new headquarters for the Met Office in Exeter began in October 2001.

All the construction work was completed at the Met Office on schedule and on budget. The building was handed over to GSL and became fully operational in December 2003. Facilities include a restaurant, gym and shop.

The new building has an 11kv ring main lowered to 440/220 volts at transformer substations for further distribution around the site.

 

The IT halls are geographically separated and each has a 2kVA UPS supply, fed from separate transformers and switchrooms.

In the event of a loss of power to the site these UPS systems are each capable of maintaining power to the IT halls.  Additional smaller UPS's are located elsewhere to provide UPS supplies to all IT systems (including desktop pc's) on the site.

The four-1.6kVA diesel generator sets will power up from standby to full site load in under 2 minutes. They have sufficient fuel storage on site to maintain the site at full load for in excess of two weeks.

The two supercomputers are key in helping the Met office further improve the way it handles the huge volumes of weather data and other information which it receives every day. Also included are a media centre, training college, conference facilities, a library and facilities to develop and test new systems.

 

Transition arrangements

 

The Met Office relies on maintaining a 24-hour, 365 day-a-year operation. Our approach to the transition arrangements was to ensure continuity of service to the Met Office throughout the process of relocating to the new building, meet the target dates for relocation and minimise the impact of the relocation on both the Met Office business and staff.

Vital elements of successful execution of the move to the new site were good communications, staff involvement and a robust, flexible and transparent decant plan.

We have developed a strong and active partnership with the Met Office which assisted in the phased delivery of the new accommodation and its supporting infrastructure. This planned migration of staff started with the IT infrasture.  At the time this was the largest IT move in Europe and this was followed by tranches of staff over a month period. A joint transition team led by key decision-makers from the Met Office and the Stratus consortium ensured that the impact of each stage on customers, employees, contractors and local residents was assessed and managed succesfully.

At completion the Met Office chief executive Peter Ewins said: “It’s a very exciting time for us starting work in a vastly different and greatly improved environment.

In December 2001, we said that our aim was to be operational in Exeter by September 2003.The fact that we have achieved our aim, and done so within budget, is a great tribute to all concerned.” He added: “I am sure that our new home will provide a firm foundation for the Met Office’s business for many decades to come.”

 

Operation

 

GSL is responsible for virtually all of the support requirements for the building and its staff over the initial contract. GSL provides IT, catering, cleaning and logistics. These services are accessed via a facilities service centre (helpdesk).

Over 1,200 people are now working in the building where accommodation is arranged around a ‘main street’ for pedestrians which includes water features.

GSL’s responsibilities include:

 

Management philosophy

The key objective of our service delivery is to strengthen the Met Office brand through enhancing business effectiveness, flexible management of services, customer and employee satisfaction, system resilience and effective environmental management.
Our solution provides a flexible workforce integrated with the client delivering services that are unobtrusive, responsive, efficient, focused on matching service outputs to business needs and designed to meet the requirements of the Met Office over the long term.

In order to achieve this aim we focus on the way in which people contribute to the well-being and business outputs of the Met Office. A critical element of managing our people is ensuring that the knowledge and experience our people have is applied where it is needed when it is needed. Our experience tells us that if the support and develop staff inturn they feel they are part of a well-managed structure that is key to the corporate mission of the Met Office then morale and business efficiency soar.

One of the bedrocks is the quality management system ISO9001 - 14001 that we operate throughout the contract.





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