Stage management

摘要

Contractors and consultants on the lottery-funded Milton Keynes Theatre and Gallery have signed a pact to ensure the project's success. Michael Glackin reports on a partnering triumph. The idea of contractors and consultants getting together on site and signing a charter that commits them to "adopt a 'can do' attitude" and "enjoy working" might seem laughable. But when contractor Laing Eastern, engineer Whitby Bird & Partners and architect Andrzej Blonski/Michael Heard started work on the £22m Milton Keynes Theatre and Gallery, they committed to doing just that. "This is a complex project," says John Napleton, project director for joint client the Commission for New Towns and Milton Keynes Borough Council, and instigator of the charter. "I felt it would require close co-operation between the consultants and contractors on site to ensure its success."