Premier Inn build on target for end of year completion

Carpets – safely protected by clear polythene – are now down in what will be Guernsey’s first Premier Inn, and the company’s carpenters are starting the long process of piecing together all the room furniture.

Despite two Covid interventions, totalling some eight weeks off site, the target completion date of the end of 2021 should be achieved.

The £30m.-plus project had a two-year time-frame and considering the task was to build a 100-bedroom Premier Inn and restaurant, 120-cover cafe, 30,000sq. ft of offices and a 370-space multi-storey car park, phase one of the two-phase project has stood up well to everything thrown at it, or more precisely Covid.

Phase one comprises finishing the hotel and offices, build the car park and perimeter road.

Phase two, which will not start until phase one is completed, involves a second office block and central plaza.

‘It is, by some way, the biggest we’ve ever done,’ said Jeremy Rihoy, chairman of Rihoy & Son. ‘It is biggest in size but also because it has to be done in a short time scale, a £30m.-plus project to be done in two years.’

Robin Le Page, operations director for Rihoy’s, said that the original programme was close to two years in length.

‘It’s obviously been extended because of Covid. Covid had various impacts and obviously the client worked with us on that, but completion was towards the end of this year, early next. With everything that is going on it is pushing on well.’

Mr Le Page said things had initially got off to a very soggy start.

‘Everyone forgets it now, but the first winter we had here was horrendous. That was during the original groundworks.’

Mr Rihoy added: ‘It rained pretty much every day for three months.

‘There was a lot of pumping and de-watering of the site, which was a real challenge and if there is ever a time not to be bringing out of the ground it was then.’

Giving Mr Rihoy added satisfaction is the fact that the company has utilised almost entirely local labour who were on its books, with very few workmen brought in from outside the island.

‘We have got about 130 men on site at the moment,’ said Mr Le Page. ‘We have taken on some extra staff but we’ve probably had to service it from our own workforce more than we anticipated because of the [Covid] restrictions.’

Covid interventions apart, the company said the project had not been a complicated build.

‘It’s the biggest in terms of the turnover, but it is true to say that the majority of what we are doing is probably, in the main, similar to what we normally do,’ said Mr Rihoy.

‘What sets it apart is the size. I don’t think we are doing anything out of the ordinary in terms of building construction in Guernsey.

‘The foundations were reasonably straightforward, a mixture of traditional and piled - then as we come up it’s the sort of structure we are used to building.’

The company moved on site in August 2019, with the demolition of Sydney Vane House. Three to four months of enabling works put the firm in a position to start groundworks of what Mr Le Page called ‘effectively three or four jobs in one place’.

‘The office is steel frame and concrete composite deck and the hotel is seal and concrete to first floor. and the upper three floors are timber frame.’