Working inside a sixty-year-old building meant the record could not be trusted. The original as-built drawings were inaccurate, floor levels did not line up, and asbestos sat in places that were hard to reach, so RCP verified the real conditions across the building before any fit-out began. Stripping the old façade had to be done without weakening the structure being kept, which shaped how the work was sequenced.
Then came a run of events outside anyone's control. COVID arrived mid-project and forced a redesign, reshaping the hotel's footprint and expanding the office floors to suit a changed market. Flooding meant the lift shafts had to be fully rebuilt, and as the neighbouring City Rail Link tunnelled past, water pushed into the basement and called for a specialised water-management system RCP coordinated into the build. Each was absorbed without losing the precinct's completion.
The Deloitte Centre now stands as the finished edge of Commercial Bay, a five-star hotel, rooftop hospitality and modern offices carried inside a reused 1960s structure. By keeping and reworking that building instead of demolishing and building new, the project avoided the substantial embodied carbon a new tower would have taken, making adaptive reuse its single biggest sustainability move.
