Mayfield Watford Retirement Village

Mayfield Watford, our fifth successful contract delivered for Audley Group, boasts 255 one and two-bedroom apartments, a state-of-the-art health club, swimming pool, café bistro and a versatile multi-purpose village hall.

Embracing the importance of nature and relaxation, the development benefits from inviting green spaces and ample parking, helping to create a great experience for owners and their guests.  

A proven track record of delivery 

By seamlessly blending our design and construction expertise with Audley's vision of retirement living, we have repeatedly delivered villages with exceptional facilities including projects at Cooper's Hill in Englefield Green, St Elphin’s Park retirement village in Matlock, Audley Clevedon in Ilkley and the luxurious retirement village Audley Inglewood in Kintbury.  

Across multiple projects, we have consistently achieved the highest levels of quality, giving Audley Group confidence that they can successfully handover apartments to their new owners.  

We are extremely pleased with the collaborative way in which this contract is being managed by the whole Balfour Beatty Team, from senior management through to the site team.

Kevin Hudson

Construction Director, Audley Group

Unlocking productivity and efficiency through early collaboration 

By fostering early collaboration between the project’s partners including Audley Group and the design, manufacturing, logistics and construction teams, we integrated the various elements of the project into one solution, ready to be delivered Right First Time. This helped us to avoid re-doing works and minimised health and safety risks for our workforce as well as removing any additional carbon emissions and waste production that re-work would create. 

Our short interval control system identified opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our production. It was crucial to managing the technical complexities, logistical challenges and time constraints of the project. We used it as part of our robust quality assurance handover system, giving Audley Group piece of mind that we would deliver to their requirements.

£68m

project

800,000

hours without a lost time incident

4,000I

fuel per year saved

This approach helped establish a systematic workflow within building the project, marked by distinct checkpoints that greatly enhanced quality control, ensured safe working environments, improved program efficiency, and ultimately resulted in the delivery of exceptional productivity and quality.  

Modern construction methods deliver efficiencies 

To construct the building façade, we used a brick slip system that replicated traditional brickwork while offering the benefits of modern construction methods. This innovative approach successfully recreated the look and feel of traditional brickwork while streamlining the installation process and alleviating the structural burden on the building structure. K-Rock pre-finished boards were also used, allowing for the staged release of five floors for fit-out before the installation of the brick slips commenced. The fast installation of the K-Rock prefinished boards and windows ensured the building was watertight as soon as possible, allowing internal works to begin at an early stage. 

As well as allowing internal works to commence as early as possible, the use of brick slips also reduced labour on-site and eliminated scaffolding to help us reduce risks associated with working at height. 

Digitally enabled delivery 

Throughout the project, we used the BIM 360 Field software platform to capture quality records, to reference construction issue design information on-site and to help address any problems during construction. We also used the platform to track and resolve issues, with the latest information available to management teams in real-time. It also facilitated the identification of subcontractors with slow or inefficient closeout times, allowing us to help them improve their performance. 

Driving carbon emission down 

To significantly reduce our carbon emissions, we adopted low carbon alternatives across the project. This included using a Punch Flybird 105 kVA generator to power the tower crane. This advanced system harnesses flywheel technology to generate kinetic energy to enhance the performance of the diesel generator. It both maximises power output and minimises fuel consumption, resulting in a 50% reduction in fuel usage.  

The team also used solar panels to power and maintain aviation lights on both tower cranes to eliminate greenhouse emissions.