Location: Guinness Storehouse, Dublin 8

Client: Diageo

Sector: Leisure & Hospitality

Role: Project Managers

Description:

FESP have been providing project management services to Diageo in the Guinness Storehouse for over 10 years. Located at the heart of St James’s Gate Brewery, the Guinness Storehouse tells the story of one of Ireland’s most iconic brands, Guinness. In 2016 Diageo embarked on a project to extend the existing Gravity Bar to double the floor area and occupancy to 500 visitors.

The Gravity Bar is located 46m above street level and the brief from Diageo was for the visitor attraction beneath to remain open at all times. The Storehouse has been Irelands No 1 visitor attraction for consecutive years and welcomes over 1.7 million visitors each year. To meet this client requirement of no downtime almost 2 years were spent on the pre-construction aspects to ensure the design and construction methodologies were developed to minimise the impact to the visitor attraction.

The construction works took over 16 months to complete. Extensive enabling works were carried out within the visitor attraction. The enabling works were executed out of hours and ensured the main works above roof level could be executed largely within normal business hours.

Over 600 people were involved in the project, including architects, engineers, contractors, and tradesmen with a total of incident free 175,000 manhours worked.