Cutting-edge design for prestigious new Cirencester headquarters

Cheltenham-based Abbey Business Equipment is delighted to announce the completion of one of its largest office furniture supply contracts in recent years.

The prestigious 45,000 sq ft Cirencester-based headquarters for the Wealth Management company St. James’s Place is now home to over 300 members of staff. The new building is a major milestone in the company’s 17-year history, which in 1991 started in the town as J. Rothschild Assurance.

Abbey Business Equipment was selected by St. James’s Place to take on the challenging task of designing the ideal working space to incorporate staff from the company who were housed in six separate buildings within Cirencester itself. “We have developed an excellent working relationship with St. James’s Place over the last seven years and were delighted to be chosen to work with them on this large and exciting project for their impressive new headquarters in Cirencester.” (Neil Brimble, Managing Director of Abbey Business Equipment)

Abbey Business Equipment provided all the office furniture, supplying high-quality products designed to create a unique, comfortable and contemporary working environment. This included the workstations, seating and storage, meeting rooms, the boardroom, a bespoke reception counter and the post room, along with a café bar and break-out areas which are located within a fantastic glass-roofed walkway running the entire length of the building known as ‘The Street’. Every square foot of the building was meticulously designed and realised, even down to the furnishing of the first-aid room. To ensure staff needs were fully catered for, several months prior to the furniture installation Abbey Business Equipment created a small mock-up of the proposed open-plan office furniture layout and all of St. James’s Place employees were asked to assess its suitability and provide feedback, all of which was considered for the final specification and lead to some enhancements to the products under consideration for this project.

Sonia Gravestock, Operations Director of St. James’s Place Wealth Management said: “We have had a long-term relationship with Abbey and we were delighted to be able to work with them on the furniture proposal for our new head office. We are delighted with the results.”

All office furniture supplied was sourced and manufactured in the UK, a priority that both Abbey Business Equipment and St. James’s Place Wealth Management felt was essential to ensure the high standards of quality, continuity of supply and on-going service support that were essential to such a major project. Installation of the furniture took place in phases between early December 2007 and the middle of February 2008, resulting in the simultaneous completion of each wing of the building on time. Abbey’s associate company ‘Design & Project Solutions’ (also based in Cheltenham) undertook the space planning for this project and then carried out the complex task of moving items such as personal effects, computer equipment and considerable amounts of filing from the old buildings to the new.

Now that the dust has settled and the builders long gone, St. James’s Place employees have embraced their new working environment and Abbey continue to receive many positive comments regarding the overwhelming success of this project. Abbey Business Equipment, based on Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham, is a leading business solutions provider which has been trading since 1989. The company offers expert advice in creating and managing effective office environments and is a major independent supplier of office furniture, photocopiers and digital printers. Other major local projects include work undertaken for Zurich Financial Services, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, Endsleigh Insurance Services, Kraft Foods, Gloucestershire County Council, Messier Dowty, GCHQ, Mears plc and W H Smith.