IN Brief:
- Kier’s £98.95m Holden House contract covers around 135,000 sq ft of office and retail space.
- The scheme retains the Grade II-listed Oxford Street façade and uses a precast façade strategy.
- Superstructure works are due in spring 2027, with completion targeted for the second half of 2028.
Kier has secured a £98.95m contract from Derwent London to redevelop Holden House at the junction of Oxford Street and Rathbone Place, adding another substantial West End project to its London workload. The behind-the-façade scheme will retain the Grade II-listed frontage while replacing and extending much of the building behind it.
The completed development will provide around 135,000 sq ft of commercial accommodation across eight storeys, comprising approximately 115,000 sq ft of Grade A offices and 20,000 sq ft of retail space. A central glazed atrium will bring daylight into the enlarged floorplates, while the office specification includes operable windows, terraces, cycle facilities, showers, changing areas, and a landscaped shared roof terrace.
Construction is now commencing, with the superstructure due to begin in spring 2027. Derwent London is targeting completion in the second half of 2028, giving Kier a multi-year programme on one of central London’s busiest commercial corridors.
The retained façade gives the project a different delivery profile from a straightforward demolition and new-build scheme. Existing historic fabric has to remain stable and protected while the structure behind it is removed and reconstructed, creating temporary-works, sequencing, tolerance, and interface requirements that continue throughout the structural phase.
Those constraints are amplified by the site’s position opposite the Dean Street entrance to Tottenham Court Road station. Storage and delivery space are limited, pedestrian activity is intense, and construction logistics must operate around neighbouring businesses, public transport infrastructure, and heavily used streets.
Kier plans to use a precast façade solution as part of its modern methods of construction strategy. Manufacturing substantial elements away from the site can reduce certain activities at the building edge and improve repeatability, but the advantage depends on early coordination because dimensions, connections, finishes, and interfaces have to be resolved before components enter production.
That requirement shifts more design effort towards the front of the programme. Late changes that might be manageable with a site-built system can become disruptive once precast units are manufactured, particularly where delivery slots and lifting sequences have already been planned around a restricted central London site.
Holden House is Kier’s second major project for Derwent London after Network W1. The repeat appointment gives the contractor continuity with the developer’s standards while introducing a different technical mix through façade retention, heritage constraints, and off-site manufacturing.
Environmental performance is also central to the brief. Derwent London is targeting BREEAM Outstanding, LEED Platinum, NABERS UK 5 stars, EPC A, SmartScore Platinum, and WiredScore Platinum, creating requirements that extend from design through commissioning and into verified operational performance.
Meeting those standards on a retained-building redevelopment demands close coordination between structure, envelope, building services, controls, and commissioning. Existing fabric can constrain service routes and floor-to-floor dimensions, while new façade and mechanical systems have to work with retained elements rather than being designed around a completely blank site.
The commercial context favours this sort of deeper intervention. Premium office schemes in central London increasingly have to compete on energy performance, connectivity, flexibility, and occupier experience, while heritage and embodied-carbon considerations make wholesale demolition less straightforward on many sites.
That is pushing contractors towards projects that combine refurbishment skills with new-build disciplines. Structural alteration, façade retention, envelope replacement, services upgrades, fit-out, and public-realm interfaces may all sit within the same programme, with risk concentrated at the junctions between old and new construction.
The Oxford Street location also makes logistics a design issue rather than simply a site-management task. Crane strategy, delivery sequencing, temporary works, precast installation, and storage all need to be developed early enough to prevent the surrounding street network from dictating the construction programme.
Off-site manufacture can help reduce that pressure, although it does not eliminate it. Components still have to arrive in the correct order and within narrow delivery windows, and any manufacturing defect or dimensional mismatch can interrupt installation quickly when there is little space to hold replacement material on site.
With work now starting and the structural phase approaching in 2027, Holden House moves into the part of the programme where retained heritage fabric and new construction begin to interact physically. The £98.95m contract gives Kier another significant West End scheme, but its delivery will be shaped less by its headline value than by the precision required behind a façade that is staying exactly where it is.
