Northern Ireland construction firm Graham has completed the restoration of the former Osney Power Station in Oxford, converting the Victorian landmark into the Global Leadership Centre for the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

The project retained original brick façades on three sides while the structure behind was demolished and rebuilt, with piling and slab work carried out in restricted headroom beside the River Thames.

Inside the standing walls, a compact piling rig bored and excavated in sequenced stages, forming the new ground slab as the old slab and foundations were taken out. Of 448 cubic metres of concrete removed from the ground, 430 cubic metres was crushed and reused as the piling mat.

The riverside location called for a sheet-piled cofferdam, while scaffolding was wrapped over the water to keep it clear of the riverbed. With the river on one side and homes on the other, Graham ran a remote materials compound so deliveries arrived in smaller loads and limited the tower crane’s operating radius to protect neighbours.

Designed by John McAslan + Partners with Mann Williams as structural engineer, the Global Leadership Centre converts the former turbine hall into a triple-height convening space and adds 120 bedrooms across three new floors. The redevelopment was supported by a £15 million donation from Saïd Business School’s founding benefactor.

Osney opened in 1892 as Oxford’s first electrical power station and ran until 1968, after which the University of Oxford used it as an engineering research laboratory.

Pat O’Hare, regional director at Graham, said: “Successfully delivering a redevelopment of this nature required meticulous planning, technical excellence and close collaboration at every stage.” O’Hare added: “The completed building is a fantastic example of how heritage and modern construction can come together to create something truly special.”

Louise Croft, managing director of executive education at Saïd Business School, said: “The Global Leadership Centre at Oxford Saïd is our dedicated home for leadership education.” Croft added: “It offers contemporary classrooms, open areas for networking, riverside dining, and wellbeing facilities.”

The structural driver is the engineering complexity of adapting a heritage industrial building for education use, which Graham says required extensive planning and engineering. For the sector, the completed centre shows retained masonry, deep foundation work and riverside logistics being resolved on one constrained site.

Source: newsletter.co.uk / architecturetoday.co.uk / infrastructure-now.co.uk / sbs.ox.ac.uk