Bid Assistance

At APL we cherish our relationships with our clients and in so doing, realise that sometimes we have to go the extra mile to help them become successful, strange as it may seem, but if our clients are successful, then maybe we might be too!

Quite an unusual phenomenon in the construction industry we know, but we believe that collaborative working can deliver some significant reward for everyone involved in a project, kind of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.     

We received a call from a partner contractor asking if we could assist them in improving the layout of a scheme which had already been granted planning permission on which they were bidding. The scheme consisted of 22 apartments and 4 retail units at ground floor.

There were 2 issues for our Architects to grapple with. Firstly the Developer was looking for a larger retail unit, suitable for an urban, mini supermarket, the difficulty was that by moving load bearing walls around in the ground floor retail unit, there would be an impact on the upper storey configurations. Secondly, the 22 apartments were not compliant with required space standards for Social Housing. Overcoming these issues would win our partner contractor the work.

We provided a solution that not only delivered the required space for the larger retail unit, but delivered 24 apartments, all compliant. This was achieved by moving stairwells and lift shafts around, providing more living accommodation.

APL Architects delivered this service based on a fee contingent on our contractor partner winning the work. We are pleased to say that our partner contractor is in the final throws of negotiations with the Developer and a Housing Association.

Watch our case studies for the full detail of the happy ending – appearing soon.