Addleshaw Goddard

Addleshaw Goddard is a UK-based law firm with over 1,200 employees and office locations in London, Leeds and Manchester. Its unique business model means it delivers exceptional value for money. The simplicity of three offices working together as `one firm` and consistently high-quality advice blended with a lower cost base than City rivals is unparalleled. It fields quality professionals where and when needed for a wide range of clients including FTSE 350 and comparable organisations, financial institutions, public sector bodies, successful businesses and private individuals. Addleshaw Goddard’s lawyers are leaders across a broad range of practice areas including banking and finance, commercial litigation, competition, construction, corporate finance, corporate restructuring and insolvency, defamation, employment, IP, IT, pensions, PFI and projects, private client, private equity, real estate, sport and tax.

As a forward-looking, dynamic organisation, Addleshaw Goddard wanted to relocate its London-based operations from two separate London based locations to a contemporary new office building in central London. The prestigious Milton Gate building contains 200,000 sq ft of office space over seven floors, six of which are being occupied by Addleshaw Goddard. The Relocation provided Addleshaw Goddard with the opportunity to employ cutting-edge technology to create a flexible and innovative working environment for its employees.

To achieve this, consideration of Addleshaw Goddard’s IT at the early RIBA stages of the project was central to the success of the Relocation. Having had previous experience of delivering other high-profile IT Relocation projects, PTS was employed as IT Consultancy Partner for Addleshaw Goddard’s project and to work alongside the other members of the professional team including the Construction Project Management company, Gardiner & Theobald Management Services (GTMS) and the Architect, MCM.

IT Relocation Strategy: The initial formulation of the IT Strategy was very important for Addleshaw Goddard as it would provide guidance to ensure that its IT vision was captured and translated into a tangible project programme, budget and objectives.

PTS thus conducted a thorough analysis of the Client’s needs, and the existing technology already in place, as well the Client’s aspirations for the new Milton Gate building. From this, PTS was able to build a strategic roadmap and ‘Professional Team Information’ document that would enable the delivery of a high-specification IT infrastructure in harmony with the Relocation programme as a whole.

Print Strategy: A particularly important aspect of Addleshaw Goddard’s IT, was the way in which printing would be handled in the new building. Addleshaw Goddard needs to print a high volume of legal and confidential documents every day and wanted to make sure that it kept its carbon footprint to a minimum and made the best use of the floor space allocated to printers. PTS thus conducted a review of Addleshaw Goddard’s printing consumables and paper utilisation and compared it to industry standards, in order to compile a print strategy that would deliver efficiency to the business and employ industry best-practice printing techniques.

IT Design: IT Infrastructure: In conjunction with Addleshaw Goddard’s future network improvement programme, PTS helped to specify a resilient new infrastructure and Structured Cabling System. In terms of its IT Infrastructure, Addleshaw Goddard’s new building is a ‘thin building’. This means that it can host all its data remotely, using its local networks to access data as it is needed. With reduced data storage in the new building, this will further bring down energy usage, whilst the business benefits from increased back-up and redundancy.

Audio Visual: PTS helped to design an AV solution that would provide high-definition video conferencing to ten of Addleshaw Goddard’s new conference rooms as well as a state-of-the-art 120-person capacity auditorium.

IP Telephony: An important part of the design for the IPT solution was to achieve the flexibility to deliver freedom of movement for the employees between sites, meaning the new IPT technology must integrate seamlessly with the existing voice technology in place at the other sites. In conjunction with another internal project, the IPT platform is providing Addleshaw Goddard with the foundations to adopt a Unified Communication environment across its three UK sites.

Intelligent Printing: In conjunction with the print strategy compiled by PTS, Addleshaw Goddard will benefit from ‘Follow-Me-Printing’ and effective utilisation of printing resources and floor space. This means that printing will be intelligently routed to print according to document types and the users will also have control over the collection of sensitive documents which will only be made accessible on arrival at the printer.

Procurement: In order to ensure that the most suitable technology was procured for Addleshaw Goddard’s requirements, PTS managed the preparation of the technology tendering and vendor evaluation process. As an independent party in the project, PTS was able to conduct an objective appraisal of the suitability of the solutions procured to ensure that they best met Addleshaw Goddard’s needs and quality expectations. Significant cost savings were also achieved across all work streams via the competitive tendering process.

Implementation Project Management: An important part of the project was the integration of existing technology with the new. PTS worked alongside the professional team to oversee the IT programme management and testing before handover. The actual IT migration was project managed by PTS over a number of dedicated weekends in order to avoid any business disruption during the working week. Specifically, PTS was able to oversee the design of Addleshaw Goddard’s IT Equipment Room to ensure ‘Equipment Room Readiness’. PTS’s rigorous methodology and checklist made sure that the room was ready on time to the required standard for the installation of the new IT cabling and equipment.

PTS was on hand throughout the duration of the project lifecycle to ensure that the execution of the IT Strategy was integrated seamlessly into Addleshaw Goddard’s overall Relocation programme. Specific features of the project delivered to Addleshaw Goddard include:

• IT Relocation Strategy for 500 people from two locations to new 200,000 sq ft premises.
• Flexibility, innovation and quality built into IT infrastructure design and programme of works.
• Best practice print strategy to reduce carbon footprint and allow the introduction of intelligent
  printing.
• Forward-looking network design aligned with Addleshaw Goddard’s network improvement
  programme to enable a ‘thin’ data environment and improve energy efficiency
• Design and Procurement of Network; Audio Visual; IP Telephony; and Print Technology.
• Integration with existing voice and desktop technology in other locations outside of London.
• IT implementation and project management working alongside the professional team to ensure IT objectives were embedded and realised as part of the overall design programme.

Peter Thompson, Senior Project Manager for the Relocation at Addleshaw Goddard commented:

“In bringing together our London-based operations into new state-of-the-art business premises, Addleshaw Goddard has not only achieved greater operational efficiencies, but we have also been able to embrace the very latest technology and printing techniques to provide a creative and forward-looking
environment. With PTS’s involvement as our IT Consultancy partner from the very earliest RIBA stages, we have been able to ensure that our business vision and IT needs were translated into tangible project objectives with attention to detail and quality throughout. With PTS’s support, we were able to bring our London Relocation project to a successful conclusion.”