Public

Our current public sector work focuses on maximising the value of public sector property portfolios.

We are involved in projects from the beginning by carrying out condition surveys, conservation management plans, feasibility studies, and option appraisals. All of these contribute to our masterplanning process. This is often complex, with numerous threads needing disentangling before the masterplan can be conceived and design begins. We are skilled at making complex problems simple and comprehensible.

Our approach is also built on achieving consensus through considerate stakeholder and community engagement, unlocking funding and revenue potential to ensure future sustainability.

Net Zero, decarbonisation, and retrofit

Our carbon reduction plans create the foundation for longer-term decarbonising work on existing buildings. Decarbonising may be a stand-alone service or part of larger regeneration projects where adaptive reuse is the key theme. Our teams apply the latest tools, techniques, and technology to increase energy efficiency, sourcing environmentally conscious materials and reducing carbon footprints.

As early proponents of the ‘retrofit first’ revolution, our portfolio illustrates exemplary reuse, adaptation and refurbishment of civic, local authority, and government buildings, demonstrating the social, economic, and environmental benefits of conserving existing building stock.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Optimising access is the key to safeguarding buildings for future generations. We apply inclusive design techniques to ensure public buildings are accessible and welcoming to the widest and most diverse audience.

Purcell has developed a reputation for inclusive adaptions in some of the most challenging historic and grade-listed settings, such as the Parliamentary Estate in London and the New South Wales Parliament Chambers in Sydney, as well as various town halls across the country, including Manchester, Camden and Hammersmith, to name a few. At Norfolk County Hall, we won the Blue Badge Access Award for Most Inclusive Venue in 2022.

Social value

In our mission to be a force for good, we ensure the economic, social, and environmental impacts of our operations are positive, both as a business and to wider society. That’s why we have a very active Social Value Steering Group, chaired by our Head of Social Value.

In the past year, Purcell employees delivered 464 days’ worth of social value (equivalent to 13 hours per fulltime employee), mostly through partnership with public organisations and local authorities. This included training and educating young people through mentoring programmes, career advice seminars, work placements on our projects, site tours and training initiatives.

We ensure those communities in which we work always benefit from the social, economic and environmental value our work brings.

Estate rationalisation and management

Our teams are experts at devising the most appropriate and sustainable ways to identify the potential in under-utilised spaces, or to prepare an asset for sale or change of use. In 2017 we worked with the Ministry of Justice team to prepare Reading Prison for sale on the open market.

We provide estate management services. These include addressing backlog repairs through condition surveys and forward maintenance programmes.

The expertise of our architects and surveyors is based on long experience of working in occupied environments – often requiring flexibility, discretion and minimal disruption to ongoing operations. We can provide a unique balance of craft skills, innovative surveying techniques, heritage expertise where required and space-planning experience across numerous workplace types to maximise efficiency.