The restoration of Notre-Dame highlights unique project challenges

Project managers working on historic buildings must successfully bring together old and new

President Macron of France launched an international competition in May to rebuild Notre-Dame, the 12th-century Gothic cathedral that was devastated by fire in April. Suggestions so far include turning the roof into a giant greenhouse or a meditation pool. Macron hopes the restoration project will be complete within five years.

While architects’ imaginations soar as high as the destroyed spire once reached, heritage experts believe the cathedral should be restored exactly as was. Macron is open to the use of modern materials; his opponents demand a faithful recreation of the original. There will be no Gallic shrugs in this debate.

As Notre-Dame will show, project managers working on historic buildings face briefs that go beyond the usual challenges of a construction project. Intellectual and emotional skills are needed to pull off a project with so many different and sentimentally invested stakeholders. 

A makeover for The National Portrait Gallery

Jason Waddy, partner at Gardiner & Theobold, is leading work on the £35.5m redevelopment of London’s Grade 1 listed National Portrait Gallery. This will include a new extension that moves the entrance, a forecourt, the creation of new gallery space and a total refurbishment of existing galleries.

“We just achieved planning permission, and are waiting to hear from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, round two, which should be coming in September,” says Waddy. After the design and procurement has been completed, he expects to be on-site for two years.

He says a typical challenge of working on a historic building is that the building owner is usually a client with little construction experience. “There is often a learning curve for clients in the historic buildings sector,” Waddy explains. “They are doing something they may not have done in a lifetime of the organisation.”

It is paramount to get a clearly defined vision for the project set in stone. “A mistake clients make is that they think they only need a project manager for the construction, whereas actually setting the project up correctly from the outset is the most beneficial thing a project manager can do,” he says.

There are other challenges unique to historic projects – design solutions can take longer than on a standard commercial project, and the metrics aren’t the same. “If you’re building an airport, the metrics are really well defined – with a historic building, there are more esoteric questions to measure success by,” says Waddy.

Coming up with the right solution for a historic building can also be a uniquely intellectual challenge. “Conservation is about preserving what’s important, but also about giving the building a life and new uses. Adaptation and extension are acceptable, as long as it’s justifiable. Arriving at that solution can take a long time, and it can be clouded if the client organisation isn’t clear on what it wants to achieve,” Waddy explains.

It’s also a balance between intellectual and practical concerns. “However special the building or the project, you’re delivering it within a construction market, and the project manager needs to understand what is viable.”

A project manager has to inject an entrepreneurial spirit that might not come naturally to the client. “It’s our job to get a good commercial deal and outcome,” he adds.

Project managing Sutton Hoo

Mike Hopwood is visitor experience project manager at the National Trust, where he is leading the redevelopment work at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. The project, due to complete in September, includes installing a 27m steel sculpture of the original Anglo-Saxon boat, repurposing two buildings, building a new viewing tower and designing visitor trails.

Hopwood says a project like this means not only balancing conservation needs with modern visitor demands, but also looking after the natural habitat. “With everything you plan, you really have to talk to an awful lot of people. You will have varying views.”

It requires tact and sensitivity. “Outside all of the usual project management skills, you need a lot of emotional intelligence. You have to be able to sit in a room of very different needs and attitudes and work your way through and understand where everyone is coming from,” explains Hopwood. “It’s about treating [the project] with humanity and understanding and not just treating it like a bricks-and-mortar project.”

The construction of the new tower at Sutton Hoo meant weighing up the visitor benefits of providing platforms from which to see the whole site with preserving the view of the landscape. “We tested a scaffold tower to get public reaction and the feedback was amazing, but all along we agreed that this was not an iconic building,” says Hopwood.

“The brief to the architect was always: ‘This is function’. The ‘wow’ in this case is not the tower, it’s the view, so it’s strips of larch covering a steel cantilevered frame with a very small footprint. When it sits against the background of the trees it’s pretty invisible.”

With the restoration of Notre-Dame, Hopwood sees the battle as “between trying to recreate something as a replica or moving forward, as they always have done.” He believes the project will take 20 years to complete, rather than Macron’s optimistic five.

A harmonious marriage at Westminster Abbey

Jason Waddy, partner at Gardiner & Theobold, worked on the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries project at Westminster Abbey, which opened last year. It involved the construction of an access tower – the first new building alongside Westminster Abbey since 1745 – and a conversion of the triforium within the galleries into a new exhibition space.

The abbey stayed open to the public throughout. “The project operated from the outset with an acceptance of that requirement, and with an appropriate budgetary allowance to cope with that. If you properly plan, most things can be achieved,” Waddy says.