IN Brief:
- McLaughlin & Harvey will deliver the £70m main works package for Thavies Inn House at Holborn Circus.
- The redevelopment will provide around 90,000 sq ft of offices, retail space, terraces, and new public realm.
- Demolition is under way, with principal construction scheduled to start during the fourth quarter of 2026.
McLaughlin & Harvey has been appointed by Evans Randall Investors to deliver the £70m main construction contract at Thavies Inn House on Holborn Circus in central London.
The award moves the £200m redevelopment into its principal delivery phase after final consents cleared in July. Erith Contractors has begun demolition, with McLaughlin & Harvey due to start construction in the fourth quarter of 2026 following pre-commencement activity.
WilkinsonEyre has designed the replacement building as two nested forms on the southern side of Holborn Circus, between New Fetter Lane and St Andrew Street. The scheme will double the floorspace of the existing ten-storey property, creating around 90,000 sq ft of offices and 2,000 sq ft of ground-floor retail space.
The main-contract award is a distinct step beyond the July consent milestone, when McLaughlin & Harvey had already been identified as lead contractor. With the commercial package now confirmed, responsibility turns to coordinating demolition handover, site logistics, structure, envelope, building services, and public-realm works within a tightly constrained City location.
Lawrence Brown, regional commercial director at McLaughlin & Harvey, said the team was “thrilled to have been appointed for this redevelopment in one of London’s most prominent commercial locations.”
The site sits beside one of the City’s busiest junctions, where vehicle, cycle, and pedestrian movement limits the freedom normally available for deliveries, lifting operations, waste removal, and temporary road occupation. Adjoining buildings and underground services add further constraints, while the available holding area for materials is limited.
The transition from demolition into the main build will therefore be a critical programme interface. Surveys, temporary works, retained structures, utilities, party-wall conditions, and ground information need to be transferred accurately between Erith and McLaughlin & Harvey so that early structural works are not disrupted by assumptions made before the site was opened up.
The completed building is intended to compete at the upper end of London’s office market. Balconies or terraces are planned at every office level, while public-realm works extend across Thavies Inn Courtyard, St Andrew Street, and Holborn Circus, with a new south-facing public park forming part of the wider scheme.
Those elements add interfaces beyond the core frame and façade. Terraces and balconies require careful coordination of waterproofing, drainage, thermal continuity, fire stopping, balustrades, access, and maintenance, while the public realm has to be sequenced around continuing construction traffic before final landscaping and pedestrian routes can be handed over.
The environmental brief sets further delivery targets. McLaughlin & Harvey says the BREEAM pre-assessment puts the development on course for an Outstanding rating, while a NABERS Independent Design Review has been completed with a five-star target.
Those ratings depend on more than the design intent established before construction. Building-services installation, controls, metering, airtightness, commissioning, and the performance of the completed envelope all influence whether projected energy performance survives the transition from modelled design to an occupied building.
WilkinsonEyre’s design also incorporates whole-life carbon and circular-economy principles, increasing the importance of decisions made during demolition and procurement. Materials recovery, replacement specifications, and the coordination of new structure with the retained site conditions will influence how much of that strategy survives the practical constraints of construction rather than remaining confined to the planning documents.
The commercial-office market has become more selective as occupiers place greater weight on energy use, amenities, transport access, and adaptable space. That has increased pressure on older buildings requiring substantial investment to reach current expectations, particularly where redevelopment can create more efficient floorplates and higher-performing services.
Thavies Inn House follows that replacement logic. Evans Randall acquired the existing 50,000 sq ft building in 2016, and the redevelopment will materially increase the site’s usable commercial area while reworking the relationship between the building and its surrounding streets.
For McLaughlin & Harvey, the £70m award now turns those planning and design decisions into a live construction programme. The constrained site means logistics and sequencing will be as important as the structural solution, while the environmental targets will require coordination to continue through commissioning rather than ending when the design packages are released.
Demolition and pre-commencement work will determine how cleanly that programme starts. Once the site passes into the main-contract phase in the fourth quarter, the project’s next measurable milestones will be physical ones — substructure, frame, envelope, services, and public realm — rather than further approvals.
