Terrapin speeds construction of car hire centre

Speed of construction on site and innovative design by Terrapin were the key factors in the construction of BAA Southampton's new car hire reception centre, which opened in February 2008

The reception centre is expected to handle over half a million car rental transactions over the next five years.

Terrapin was on site to begin erection of the 208m2 building just five weeks from the order being placed, and the project team took only eight weeks to complete the whole project, including foundations, groundwork, services, decoration, cladding, installation of automatic doors and an aluminium canopy.

The open-plan timber-frame building was constructed using panels manufactured at the company's Milton Keynes factory and erected on site.

The building houses five car hire companies, and breaks from traditional car rental industry layout by replacing the more familiar high desks with oval "pods", specially installed for Avis by Terrapin, increasing counter space and allowing staff to provide customers with a more personal service.

Rapid construction was essential to minimise disruption to passenger movements - the new facility is ideally located between the airport terminal and the rental vehicle car park.

All activity on site took place between 11pm and 5am to reduce further the impact on the airport operations.

BAA Project Manager Justin Wright commented: "Terrapin has delivered a building that the business is very happy with".

Offsite construction has the advantage of allowing quality-assured engineering in a factory environment, often while groundworks are being carried out.

While the building at Southampton was assembled using standard elements, Terrapin was able to accommodate specific client requirements, such as the customer service "pods" and special vinyl flooring, from the design stage to completion.

Terrapin is a privately owned company and is one of the UK's leaders in offsite construction.

It has been expanding the potential of MMC since 1949 and now offers a range of complementary MMC technologies that can be used individually or combined to create bespoke building solutions for every application; panel based technology, volumetric design technology and steel framed, element build technology.

Terrapin is the first company to be accredited under Buildoffsite's new supplier registration scheme operated by Lloyd's Register.

The scheme standardises all aspects of the offsite process and ensures best practice, offering clients confidence in the assured levels of competence, methodology and safe working of the accredited supplier.

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