Latest / Project Podcast / EastEnders at Elstree Studios: behind the scenes of a project to redevelop the site

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EastEnders at Elstree Studios: behind the scenes of a project to redevelop the site · Project Podcast

• 0:00
  It's been all right, really. Hasn't it?
• 0:01
  It's. Had its moments, but it's.
• 0:04
  Kind of ended. Up in the right place.
• 0:06
  It's EastEnders. It's going to have its moment.
• 0:07
  Well, of course. More.
• 0:08
  Drama off. Screening.
• 0:24
  I'm here at Elstree Studios on a sunny summer's day where it's
• 0:27
  been home to EastEnders since 1985. 2020 5 was an important
• 0:31
  year for the BBC soap which filmed a live episode on 20th of
• 0:35
  February to celebrate EastEnders 40th anniversary.
• 0:39
  And I have to admit I'm a long term fan so it's pretty amazing
• 0:42
  to be here. I'm just north of London to go
• 0:45
  behind the scenes of a project to create new production and
• 0:48
  post production suites from a derelict building and give
• 0:51
  actors the new dressing rooms and make up rooms they needed.
• 0:54
  So come with me through the gates to get a flavour of what
• 0:57
  it's like on a construction project in a creative
• 0:59
  environment like this, with cast and crew filming around you as
• 1:03
  the project takes shape. Let's go and meet the lead
• 1:06
  project actors and get a tour behind the scenes.
• 1:13
  Doctor John Foley, director of J4 Projects is the first to meet
• 1:16
  me at the gates of L Street. Built off a residential Rd in
• 1:19
  Hertfordshire in 1925. It's where Alfred Hitchcock
• 1:22
  filmed the first British talking film and Stanley Kubrick filmed
• 1:26
  The Shining. As the main contractor for the
• 1:28
  project, John has been responsible for delivering the
• 1:31
  two phase project for the BBC. The brief was to complete a sale
• 1:35
  and leaseback of the 16 acre site where EastEnders is filmed
• 1:39
  and where Holbrook City was filmed until 20/21.
• 1:42
  The site was sold to AXA and Oxygen Studios as a joint
• 1:46
  venture in March this year with the BBC and leaseback agreement
• 1:49
  that covered around half the site.
• 1:52
  In January 2024 work began for the building fit out of offices
• 1:55
  and post production suites for EastEnders and in September 2024
• 1:59
  work began on creating 54 new dressing rooms, a crew and cast
• 2:03
  Cafe and costume stores. In February this year the BBC
• 2:07
  successfully vacated the non leaseback area and all of this
• 2:11
  project work took place during EastEnders 40th anniversary
• 2:14
  celebrations, including the filming of a live episode in
• 2:17
  February. So this is the story about
• 2:20
  working on a complex project in a live environment and the
• 2:23
  lessons that can be learnt from it.
• 2:25
  Let's cut to me interviewing Simon Alston, Strategic
• 2:27
  Transformation Director at BBC Studios, which is the commercial
• 2:31
  arm of the broadcaster. Simon was the programme manager
• 2:34
  for the project, responsible for keeping it within cost and
• 2:37
  budget and to make the key milestone of vacant possession
• 2:40
  in February this year, when the new landlord took full control
• 2:43
  of the site, I began by asking him why the project was
• 2:47
  necessary. On this project you've got
• 2:50
  EastEnders. Obviously there's a brand that
• 2:52
  goes out onto BBC One, so hugely important for the public
• 2:56
  service, but then equally it's, it's made and produced by BBC
• 3:00
  Studios. It's one of the few projects
• 3:03
  that sort of spans across the two parts of the BBC.
• 3:07
  So the need with doing this project is also to do with the
• 3:10
  BB CS overall property strategy. We owned and have owned the
• 3:15
  Elstree site for many, many years, so probably 60-70 years
• 3:20
  now. The reality is that on the site
• 3:24
  there was a lot of ageing buildings and that that part of
• 3:27
  that is to do sort of the legacy.
• 3:29
  There's been, you know, shows shot here for many decades.
• 3:34
  But some of the buildings were sort of reaching end of life and
• 3:37
  some of the infrastructure was reaching the end of life.
• 3:39
  And to both update the buildings and to change a lot of the
• 3:46
  infrastructure, it was an extremely would have been an
• 3:50
  extremely costly exercise for the BBC to do.
• 3:52
  So we looked at two options. One is to keep the site in its
• 3:57
  entirety and update the physical infrastructure on the site.
• 4:02
  And we put that alongside the other option which was to sell
• 4:06
  the site, lease back half of it to continue to make BB CS
• 4:10
  EastEnders programme on that site.
• 4:12
  And then we sort of weighed up the two and by a relatively
• 4:17
  small margin, the approach to sell the site and lease back was
• 4:22
  considered by the BBC board to be the best option.
• 4:25
  OK, for commercial reasons? It's commercial, it's risk and
• 4:29
  it's also for what I would call transformation risk.
• 4:34
  So if you are, if I suppose if you are knocking down buildings,
• 4:39
  old buildings and you're, you're trying to sort of repair them
• 4:43
  and build them up again, that carries both capital risk
• 4:47
  because you need to find the money to do it immediately.
• 4:49
  And also there's a, there's sort of a, a, a risk of disruption if
• 4:54
  you put that on the, when you think about a leaseback option,
• 4:57
  you've obviously got to go to market, you've got to get a good
• 4:59
  commercial return for selling the site.
• 5:02
  But then equally, you've got to make sure that there are
• 5:05
  effective provisions within the agreement with your new landlord
• 5:08
  to protect what we're trying to do on the site, which is making
• 5:12
  standards for 48 for 9 weeks of the year.
• 5:16
  I asked Simon to tell me what his priorities were for the
• 5:18
  project. On on this project there was
• 5:21
  two, there was two things, two big macro things.
• 5:23
  One is to make sure that the agreement that we agree with the
• 5:28
  new landlord, which is AXA, that's what that sort of
• 5:33
  maximise the commercial return for the BBC, but then also put
• 5:36
  in where necessary certain protections for the production
• 5:39
  activity they want on the site. So that's almost a commercial
• 5:43
  negotiation piece. And then to allow us to keep
• 5:47
  EastEnders working on the site, there were a number of
• 5:52
  production critical facilities that were on the wrong side of
• 5:57
  the dividing line across the site.
• 5:59
  So they had to be rebuilt. We had to create new facilities
• 6:03
  and we then had to cut over from old to new without any any
• 6:09
  impact on the EastEnders production, which as as I said,
• 6:13
  rolls week after week, month after month for the majority of
• 6:17
  the year. There were ups and downs in
• 6:20
  terms of the level of disruption to the production.
• 6:24
  I think we kept that to the lowest level possible.
• 6:29
  And the main disruption was actually noise.
• 6:32
  It was noise, it was vibration. So we had two different worlds,
• 6:37
  different environments, different working worlds who
• 6:40
  were operating very, very close to each other.
• 6:43
  And those two worlds should never coexist.
• 6:46
  If you can ever get into that situation.
• 6:50
  They should never really be any close to each other at all.
• 6:52
  However, that was just the reality of what we were managing
• 6:55
  on the site. I follow this up by asking him
• 6:58
  if he judged the project as success.
• 7:01
  I think so. And the way the way I judge
• 7:03
  success is you, you take sort of a step back and say what was our
• 7:07
  objective? We achieved the revenue that BBC
• 7:11
  was seeking from selling the site.
• 7:13
  We have maintained EastEnders production schedules largely
• 7:18
  without too much interruption and you only have to walk around
• 7:22
  the new buildings to see the new facilities that the cast and the
• 7:26
  crew are now using. So in addition to sort of new
• 7:30
  technology infrastructure, we've got new edit suites, we've got
• 7:32
  new offices, we've got new dressing rooms, we've got a new
• 7:35
  Cafe. So and it's all an improvement
• 7:38
  on what it was. I think as well though on the
• 7:42
  previous site a lot of EastEnders were spread out
• 7:46
  across the site. So you had edit sweeps in one
• 7:48
  building, you had offices in Wylding, you had the dressing
• 7:50
  rooms that were quite distant and a a relatively old
• 7:55
  restaurant sort of bar facility. And now everything's together.
• 7:59
  Simon tells me he's been working in project management for the
• 8:02
  BBC for around 20 years before joining from PwC in 2011 to work
• 8:07
  on the redevelopment of Broadcasting House, which he
• 8:10
  describes as a once in a lifetime project to deliver.
• 8:13
  Carefully managing the two very different worlds of construction
• 8:16
  and film production can be tricky, and he tells me how he
• 8:19
  manages to put it off. The main thing that I tried to
• 8:23
  do is focus on the facilities that were being rebuilt.
• 8:28
  So we always said, well, you get an edit suite, you're getting
• 8:31
  offices, you're getting cafes, you're getting a new IT room and
• 8:36
  we need to replace the studio. So rather than using a little
• 8:40
  bit more project terminology, we focus on what the facility did
• 8:45
  because people can relate to that.
• 8:46
  So people know that if the cafes close and I need new cafes, if
• 8:49
  the edit suites are closing, I need a new set of edit suites.
• 8:54
  So we tried to simplify the message and then we we sought to
• 8:59
  deliver against each of those facilities and they came online
• 9:03
  at different times. And of course all of those
• 9:06
  facilities, they needed the construction team to build them.
• 9:10
  Then we needed the design team to fit them out.
• 9:14
  And then we in pretty much all of those cases need the
• 9:17
  technology team to put in the appropriate technology.
• 9:20
  And at all stages, the key was to consult with the EastEnders
• 9:25
  production team to ask them what they wanted, because this was
• 9:29
  probably the first time that for many of those facilities,
• 9:33
  they've been consulted on a new facility.
• 9:37
  To manage the commercial and production jeopardy behind
• 9:40
  EastEnders move into the lease back zone during a period of
• 9:43
  live filming was demanding. I did point out to everybody
• 9:46
  that the, the live episode's brilliant, but it's sort of
• 9:51
  happening about 10 days before this key commercial cut off date
• 9:54
  for the vacant possession. But the, the reality is we sort
• 9:58
  of said, look, you know, the BBC is here to make tremendous IP
• 10:03
  and in EastEnders cases, it's, it's, we're doing it for the
• 10:08
  nation's sake. We have to do it.
• 10:10
  We have to make the live episode work.
• 10:12
  So what we then did is we then put some parameters around how
• 10:17
  all the types of decisions that the production would need to
• 10:21
  make, bearing in mind that the site was effectively
• 10:25
  fundamentally changing very, very soon after the live
• 10:29
  episode. So for example, we said that if
• 10:33
  an area has been closed of the site, you can't reopen it just
• 10:38
  because of the live episode. We said that if you are bringing
• 10:42
  vehicles onto the site to support the live episodes, they
• 10:46
  must be gone within 48 hours. So there were certain parameters
• 10:51
  that we work with every now and again.
• 10:53
  There was a could we have a catering bank, could we have
• 10:56
  this, could we have that? And we looked at those in
• 10:58
  isolation. We made sure that there was no
• 11:01
  impact from the construction team, from the technology team
• 11:05
  and from the project team. So we, we sort of did a check
• 11:08
  and balance when we got those requests in because there were a
• 11:11
  few and, and not unexpectedly, but we just make sure that we
• 11:14
  assess them each on a sort of a case by case basis.
• 11:17
  And thankfully, the live episode was a huge success and the
• 11:22
  production team managed to support us in our endeavour to
• 11:26
  get to that vacant session moment.
• 11:28
  Finally, I asked Simon what advice he would give to project
• 11:31
  professionals working in the media or creative sphere.
• 11:35
  I think you need to understand that the creative mindset is, by
• 11:42
  the very definition, almost the polar opposite of some of the
• 11:46
  skills that you would like in a, in a project manager.
• 11:49
  So for example, a simple waterfall project plan is
• 11:54
  something that a project manager would, you know, it's, it's
• 11:57
  almost the bread and butter to somebody, maybe from the creator
• 12:01
  community. That is not a way of thinking.
• 12:05
  They think about problems and they solve.
• 12:07
  They think about problems and they solve rather than following
• 12:11
  sort of a linear plan of activities.
• 12:13
  And so when you're working in this environment, it is really
• 12:16
  important to try to hold on to the structure, but not be too
• 12:21
  dogmatic because you know at some points in time you're going
• 12:25
  to have to flex. And it's the flex, a guess that
• 12:28
  gets you the buy in with the creator committee.
• 12:31
  Not saying you do everything and certainly not saying that you do
• 12:34
  everything within the either the time or the budget prescribed by
• 12:37
  a someone with a more creative idea.
• 12:40
  But it's just to try and find that middle ground between the
• 12:44
  two. It's almost operating on the
• 12:45
  grey, I suppose is how I describe it.
• 12:48
  And it's something that needs to be embraced rather than
• 12:52
  necessarily fought against. As I already mentioned, John was
• 12:57
  tasked by Simon to deliver the projects and he gives me a
• 13:00
  behind the scenes tour around the project site together with
• 13:02
  Adam, Ryan from Hayden and Carr who was the construction project
• 13:06
  manager reporting in to John. We begin at the On The Dot Cafe,
• 13:10
  which opened in April, where I try to spot some of the
• 13:13
  EastEnders casts, sadly in vain, the reception areas kitted out
• 13:18
  to hit like the inside of the Queen Victoria pub, with cast
• 13:20
  photos and TV Awards trophies everywhere.
• 13:24
  So this was the early building. So we brought the entire
• 13:26
  building back to use. So they used to this on the
• 13:28
  ground floor was used as sort of scenery storage and there was
• 13:32
  the prison to the gaol cell and there was supporting actors
• 13:37
  spaces down here. It was disgusting.
• 13:42
  And then on level 1 was just it was mostly storage at the far
• 13:48
  end again, set storage. And then they have the the Holby
• 13:51
  City set was it they sent to the old hospital which when Holbys
• 13:56
  City got decommissioned, EastEnders took over and started
• 13:59
  using. So that was there.
• 14:00
  And then on the top floor was construction workshop, which is
• 14:03
  probably a good place to start after we've done the outside
• 14:05
  because you'll get a flavour of what it used.
• 14:07
  To be like. We walked past the three filming
• 14:10
  stages and up into the old scenery block which had become
• 14:14
  derelict and which John and his team brought back to life.
• 14:17
  Now complete, the project took 16 months to finish.
• 14:20
  I asked John, who's worked with the BBC for a decade, what he
• 14:24
  enjoys about working in a place like this.
• 14:27
  It's complex. It's got a little bit of magic
• 14:32
  about it. No day is the same.
• 14:37
  Yeah, it's very interesting projects, aren't they?
• 14:40
  John Kaley enjoyed a complex project like this, but what were
• 14:43
  the challenges he faced? Massive challenges.
• 14:46
  I mean you only have to look up really.
• 14:49
  We stripped a lot of it away, but there was so much power and
• 14:53
  data that had just historically been laid over on top of each
• 14:57
  other. Time was a big challenge as well
• 14:59
  because we had to at that end of February date.
• 15:01
  So one of the big things was how do you provide the server room?
• 15:05
  So we actually ended up buying a container chip with a ready made
• 15:10
  server room in it, which was built in Germany by a company
• 15:13
  called Rittle shipped over to here and literally just plug and
• 15:17
  play and that I got our sound a big hole in terms of programme.
• 15:21
  I think it's the it's just the project we kept on giving.
• 15:25
  So we did all the surveys you could like in the world on on
• 15:29
  where power was located and and data cables are located.
• 15:33
  And again, you'd peel back something and find more.
• 15:37
  Adam's already alluded to. We had to put some drainage into
• 15:40
  the ground floor and found a perch water table which wasn't
• 15:45
  on any of the surveys, so yeah. I asked John to explain to me
• 15:51
  about what kind of project management approaches he likes
• 15:53
  to take. Don't necessarily follow any one
• 15:58
  of those particular rules of thumb.
• 16:00
  I think we're more of a fan of from a project management
• 16:04
  perspective with, with the glue that holds everyone together.
• 16:08
  So whatever needs to be done, we'll, we'll do in whatever way.
• 16:10
  We, we, of course we have our processes are our tool kits and
• 16:14
  our trackers and our change control logs and all that good
• 16:18
  stuff. But really it's, that's, that's
• 16:21
  probably only 20% of what we do. The other 80% is the people.
• 16:24
  And that's where we've become the glue because we're able to
• 16:27
  give, to receive I suppose is the best way of thinking.
• 16:30
  So, so it's a dynamic project. Things are changing.
• 16:34
  If I do a favour for someone, then someone will do a favour
• 16:36
  for me. And then you've got a wide cross
• 16:38
  section of people here. So known if you've got the,
• 16:40
  you've got the actors, but you've also got the directors
• 16:42
  and the production staff. You've then got the FM teams,
• 16:46
  you've got the construction workshop team, you've got all
• 16:48
  the people who look after all the props and sets, security,
• 16:53
  catering. So it's, it's not one language
• 16:57
  to speak to everybody. It's, you know, understanding
• 17:00
  how you know what what's everyone's driver put you put
• 17:03
  your feet in their shoes, trying to understand where they're
• 17:05
  coming from and see if you can help them.
• 17:08
  And if you can help them, invariably they'll repay the
• 17:10
  favour when you need it. Now we go upstairs into the
• 17:14
  scenery workshop where number 79 Albert Squares bathroom is in
• 17:18
  the middle of being made replete with floral wallpaper and
• 17:21
  smelling of wood glue with the carpenters busy around us.
• 17:25
  Like we're still in the construction workshop.
• 17:26
  This is ideal. They they think of an idea and
• 17:29
  they make it. Whereas for the SAT.
• 17:33
  But whereas we're kind of governed by process and
• 17:36
  regulations, health and safety, etcetera.
• 17:39
  So you know, if they have an idea, an hour later it's built.
• 17:42
  If we have an idea, it's like a month later, it might be on a
• 17:46
  drawing if you're lucky. So what we've what we've
• 17:49
  struggled with since handover of phase one in reserve February,
• 17:54
  beginning of February is, is they're tinkering.
• 17:57
  They come up with an idea and oh, next thing you know, you
• 18:00
  come back up and there's a a new coffee machine or or a new wall
• 18:04
  being built and you know, stop guys, stop tinkering.
• 18:09
  This is a well thought through design.
• 18:12
  John laughs about fridge gate and coffee machine gate.
• 18:15
  When EastEnders finally, you know, were sort of told, you
• 18:18
  know, this is definitely happening as a deal, they were
• 18:21
  like, well, where are you going to put us?
• 18:23
  Our offices and our post production facilities, which are
• 18:25
  the wrong side of the red line, the area we were selling.
• 18:29
  So he said, well, in the, in half of the construction
• 18:32
  workshop and I got to be honest here, I think they thought we
• 18:35
  were mad. And then I bought Dee who met
• 18:38
  earlier and Sean up here. And bearing in mind they work on
• 18:41
  this site all the time. It's amazing when you walk into
• 18:43
  a space with and you know, it's construction workshop to, to, to
• 18:47
  walk into the space and imagine it as something different For
• 18:50
  these guys, it's really easy. It's what they do creative.
• 18:53
  And literally I bought Sean and Dee up here and I sort of
• 18:55
  explained what we were thinking in terms of idea.
• 18:58
  Their eyes just lit up. They're like, yes, this could
• 19:01
  work. Here we are.
• 19:03
  So we're on the northern end of of the scenery block on level 2.
• 19:11
  Previously, like the construction workshop, it was
• 19:13
  just a double height space with roof lights.
• 19:17
  Roof lights leaked pigeons in here all the time.
• 19:20
  So we we cleaned out the whole space and we put in this awesome
• 19:23
  mezzanine level with a huge well in the middle as well.
• 19:28
  So, you know, it's flooded with natural daylight.
• 19:31
  What made a big difference? Where where they were in
• 19:33
  Harthouse, the previous production office, it was it was
• 19:35
  split over three floors and they were very much department by
• 19:39
  department. Now got the art department up
• 19:42
  here, graphics department down here.
• 19:44
  They can see each other, they can talk to each other.
• 19:47
  We look around the production offices, including the
• 19:49
  storyboarding office before moving downstairs to the post
• 19:52
  production edit suites. As we walk along the corridors
• 19:55
  adorned with photos from the show and the actors who play
• 19:57
  people like Pat Britcher, even her earrings are framed on the
• 20:01
  wall. John tells you what qualities
• 20:03
  are needed to work in a place like this successfully.
• 20:07
  You just got to be interested, you've got to ask questions and
• 20:09
  get involved and like, what's this?
• 20:11
  What's that real active listener?
• 20:13
  So yeah, so this is the production facility.
• 20:14
  So you've got edit suites and you've got dubbing theatres as
• 20:17
  well. And so basically, you know, they
• 20:19
  capture all the footage out on set or in the in the stages and
• 20:22
  it comes back in. These guys, he'll be doing a
• 20:25
  first rough draught of the programme and then I'll go and
• 20:28
  get polished and refined and then end up in the producers box
• 20:32
  and they'll watch it on a sofa in a quasi living room and give
• 20:38
  it a thumbs up Or not. I take the opportunity to ask
• 20:41
  John what his proudest moment on the project was.
• 20:44
  We got it done on time. We got the 28th of February was
• 20:48
  such a key milestone and so many people said we couldn't do it
• 20:51
  and I love it when people say you can't do something.
• 20:52
  Isn't it a challenge? We've all been there at school.
• 20:56
  Then I find myself in one huge meeting room with a giant table
• 20:59
  and 55 chairs with pictures of EastEnders power couples like
• 21:03
  Den and Ange on the walls. When they're putting together
• 21:06
  stories, there are loads of people throwing ideas around, so
• 21:10
  we needed to create a space that was big enough for them.
• 21:13
  And this is actually three meeting rooms that you can knock
• 21:16
  through into one massive long area.
• 21:19
  Right? Let's do dressing rooms.
• 21:22
  Next up are the 54 brand new dressing rooms and it's along
• 21:26
  this corridor with each room's resident actor's name on the
• 21:28
  door and costume on a rail outside that we catch sight of
• 21:31
  actor Kitty Castle Dean who plays Penny Branning in the
• 21:35
  soap, who kindly lets us look around her hotel style room with
• 21:39
  en suite bathroom in a wheelchair.
• 21:41
  Castle Dean appreciates the accessibility of the room design
• 21:45
  and her room is bright and modern in contrast to the cosy
• 21:48
  current dressing rooms which are filled to the room with costume
• 21:50
  and paraphernalia. Last on our tour are the makeup
• 21:53
  and costume rooms, which are being snagged before being moved
• 21:56
  into. So you asked me earlier what the
• 21:59
  things were you needed to be a project manager and I said about
• 22:01
  interested. The other one is hard work
• 22:03
  because the harder you work at something, the more you sort to
• 22:06
  own it and understand it and then you become passionate about
• 22:09
  it. And then that comes through in
• 22:11
  everything you do. Just demonstrating to the client
• 22:14
  team particularly that you that you properly care.
• 22:17
  And part of my personality is that when I do really get into
• 22:22
  something, I really do own it. I'm very happy to challenge the
• 22:26
  client on what it is they want and why they want it, not just
• 22:30
  for the sake of challenging, but just to get the better and the
• 22:33
  best result. And I think you can only get
• 22:36
  there if you're interested in what you're doing and you work
• 22:40
  jolly hard. I come to work because I want it
• 22:44
  to be fun. I do.
• 22:45
  I do something that is really fun.
• 22:48
  Doesn't mean that it's fun all the time, but it's only fun
• 22:50
  because I apply myself to it. If I didn't apply myself to it,
• 22:54
  I probably wouldn't get under the skin of it and understand
• 22:57
  how sort of rich and complex and difficult and challenging and,
• 23:01
  you know, political with a big P, political with a small P.
• 23:06
  As we've been touring around, Adam, the Construction Project
• 23:09
  manager has been filling us in on the details.
• 23:12
  The building work started in January 2024 and took 16 months
• 23:16
  in total. This included demolitions, strip
• 23:18
  out ground works and the new overclad roofing section.
• 23:23
  All of this had to be done by an immovable date of the 28th of
• 23:26
  February this year. They met the deadline and I
• 23:29
  asked Adam what was the secret to being as successful as he has
• 23:32
  been as a project manager in a live environment like this,
• 23:36
  where filming has to carry on regardless of construction work.
• 23:40
  I think it's very cliche, but communication.
• 23:44
  So it's a we held, we had week, weekly official business impact
• 23:49
  meetings with cast crew, EastEnders themselves provided
• 23:55
  here. Stop knocking or or what they
• 23:57
  classed as stop knocking. So as soon as they were coming
• 24:00
  to their final set and their final film take, we stopped all
• 24:05
  works. Now that could be anywhere
• 24:07
  between 3:00 and 12:00 minutes. We actually start getting into a
• 24:12
  routine with the directors of the Shore and they would plan it
• 24:17
  around our tea breaks and our lunch breaks.
• 24:20
  So in the events where it was outside of them breaks the the
• 24:25
  team on site where we're very adaptable.
• 24:28
  We we'd stop all noisy works, but we'd use that time on site
• 24:32
  to do Good Housekeeping practises, toolbox talk
• 24:36
  practises and communications on site.
• 24:40
  So we could then we use that that time on a day to then plan
• 24:45
  our next steps. So we never seen it as a loss of
• 24:48
  time. We've seen it as an opportunity
• 24:51
  to then plan or to go over detail that people weren't sure
• 24:56
  about. So we used it as an advantage in
• 25:01
  our own, in our own way. I think construction itself, No,
• 25:05
  no, no days of the same. This particular project, what
• 25:10
  made it different was is construction.
• 25:13
  We're constantly working in live environments and and we always
• 25:16
  mindful of what's outside about a boundary.
• 25:20
  This was what's outside the boundary kind of on steroids.
• 25:26
  If you take any any general construction site on the High
• 25:29
  Street, yes, you've got the public to be mindful of, but
• 25:33
  there's a physical barrier all the time.
• 25:37
  We were all, all be. We had the physical barrier of
• 25:40
  the scenery block itself. We were always integrating into
• 25:45
  different parts outside of the outside of this building in
• 25:48
  order to make this building work that itself was totally
• 25:53
  different. Compare normal construction and
• 25:56
  and challenges. I asked Adam about his role
• 25:59
  leading a team of 210 people at its busiest.
• 26:03
  So I was the overall project manager from the construction
• 26:08
  side and my my responsibility was to ensure construction was
• 26:12
  delivered, design was delivered on programme, on cost, reporting
• 26:18
  in to John, any risks, any programme impacts.
• 26:23
  So my construction team were the ones that were liaising with
• 26:26
  EastEnders and the BBC. Business impact people on a
• 26:30
  ground level. And also about the lessons he
• 26:33
  learnt from a first time project like this and what went well.
• 26:36
  So towards the end of the towards the end of phase one,
• 26:40
  which was the office fit out towards the end of phase three
• 26:44
  and four, which was the ground floor changing rooms and studio
• 26:49
  works, It was it come apparent that the end users wanted it to
• 26:56
  look and feel slightly different in terms of the makeup room.
• 27:00
  They wanted different light and different layouts to make it to
• 27:04
  make it feel what they've already got rather than a more
• 27:09
  compliant user designed friendly space.
• 27:12
  Other than that, again, very cliche in 18 years of project
• 27:20
  management, I think this is probably one of the most
• 27:24
  successful projects I've delivered because everybody was
• 27:29
  everybody understood the end goal and everybody was working
• 27:34
  not for themselves, they were working collaboratively towards
• 27:37
  that end goal. It that takes on doing to get
• 27:40
  everybody to buy into one one end goal solution.
• 27:45
  I think to answer your questions, how everybody was on
• 27:48
  the same same track was I think it's, it's more credit to J4,
• 27:54
  John, Toby and Jim because it was very much like the aviation
• 28:01
  sector. There was never any blame.
• 28:04
  It was right. This has happened.
• 28:06
  How do we actually resolve it or how do we move forward?
• 28:10
  And I think the industry as a whole probably has a lot to
• 28:16
  learn from. No blame, nobody comes to work
• 28:21
  to make mistakes, but how do we rectify it to get the end result
• 28:26
  the way that we need it to be? And it was a very calming and
• 28:32
  collaborative approach to how to build a project.
• 28:36
  Certainly made my life easier that I wasn't having to having
• 28:42
  to argue week in week hour was what I understand.
• 28:46
  I understand what John wants. I know how to implement that.
• 28:51
  John had the trust in me. I had the trust in John and we
• 28:54
  had each other's backs for for a matter of two years to deliver
• 28:58
  the end product. Yeah, it was a very sobering,
• 29:02
  sobering look back over 2 years. So there wasn't any immediate
• 29:08
  lessons learning how to deliver a project, but it was more this
• 29:13
  is how you should deliver a project.
• 29:15
  This is the right culture to deliver a project of this
• 29:17
  magnitude in the timeline in the space, with all the different
• 29:23
  dynamics outside of the actual site demise.
• 29:26
  Adam tells me a bit about the project he's most proud of.
• 29:30
  I'd probably go with the ground floor fitting room area but for
• 29:36
  two reasons really. We dawn Sega 2000 linear metres
• 29:42
  of underground drainage with 127 pop ups in an 8 week period,
• 29:51
  which I think is looking back I don't know how we've done it
• 29:55
  internally rebuilding. So that was Part 1 and Part 2
• 30:00
  when you actually break. When I broke the programme down
• 30:04
  in order to do our own internal lessons learned, we actually fit
• 30:07
  out each fitting room in around 22 days and again I thought that
• 30:11
  was quite, quite remarkable. Adam tells me how the project
• 30:16
  management had to flex around the creation of new dressing
• 30:18
  rooms. So again in in terms of that,
• 30:22
  that lease back arrangement, we had to have so many dressing
• 30:26
  rooms finished in a certain timeline.
• 30:29
  So it was beginning of the end of March, beginning of the
• 30:32
  airport. So we had to move 30 No 2026
• 30:39
  dressing rooms over because EastEnders brought in trailers.
• 30:46
  Trailers were on the the wrong side of the red line.
• 30:49
  So they were getting charge rent etcetera, etcetera.
• 30:52
  So that that itself then put speeded up the programme and we
• 30:57
  had to go up. We didn't finish the drainage in
• 31:02
  this particular area until end of Jan, which then actually only
• 31:08
  give us a 4 1/2 week fit out period to do 2026 dressing
• 31:14
  rooms. We had to connect into the main
• 31:18
  main sewers roundabout here. Main sewers roundabout 12 metres
• 31:23
  that where and everything underground actually fed in.
• 31:28
  This is a bit that I like 6 weeks later when you come back
• 31:31
  and it's actually being used. Yeah, I don't mind.
• 31:35
  Part of my OCD is like, yeah. To really get under the skin of
• 31:43
  the day-to-day running of the projects and what it meant for
• 31:45
  cast and crew, I grabbed a chat with Rona Mckendrick, EastEnders
• 31:49
  Senior Production Manager and 1st Assistant Director, to ask
• 31:53
  her to tell me about what it was like to keep the show on the
• 31:55
  road throughout the duration of the construction works.
• 31:58
  She's worked on the soap for 33 years and helped production move
• 32:02
  from the back lot of the studios to the front lot 4 years ago so
• 32:06
  already had experience of a project like this.
• 32:09
  And that was really helpful for me because it was the first time
• 32:12
  that I was doing something that was not solely production
• 32:15
  related, it was much more project related.
• 32:19
  And because of my input with that, that's why it seemed quite
• 32:24
  useful for me to help move us over to this building because I
• 32:30
  knew more about project basis stuff and my production
• 32:36
  knowledge and what would be helpful and not helpful and what
• 32:40
  people like and don't like, I was able to input into it.
• 32:44
  My role as a production manager is to try and keep everybody
• 32:48
  happy all of the time, which is an impossible task.
• 32:50
  And, and it was fairly much the same with with this as well.
• 32:54
  I was deputising for the line producer because her role is so
• 32:59
  all-encompassing with regards to the show itself and the site, et
• 33:03
  cetera. I was her right hand person to
• 33:05
  be able to take all that bit to do with the project of her
• 33:09
  responsibility and I could deal with all that.
• 33:11
  So it was, yeah, it was liaising with costume, with makeup, with
• 33:15
  production, with design, working out what they wanted, what they
• 33:19
  needed to be moved. It was letting them know that
• 33:22
  this is going to be the space that you're going to have.
• 33:24
  It is smaller. You need to really start
• 33:26
  clearing your stuff away now. Dump the junk as we called it.
• 33:31
  I asked Rona what benefits the project was bringing to the
• 33:33
  Korean cast. For us, it's the fact that we
• 33:36
  are in one building. We've never had that before.
• 33:39
  We had post production over there, we had crew and cast and
• 33:43
  green rooms over there and the studios over there.
• 33:46
  And now we are literally in the same building and rather than
• 33:49
  send an e-mail, we'll go and see the person face to face.
• 33:52
  So we've added it to our sustainability tally as well.
• 33:56
  Yeah, the one of the most important elements of this
• 33:58
  project for me was communication, was communicating
• 34:02
  with the people from the project about what production needs and
• 34:05
  vice versa, communicating what the project need from
• 34:11
  production. We don't have problems.
• 34:14
  We always find solutions to the problems.
• 34:17
  She tells me what it's like working there.
• 34:20
  It's very fast-paced. It's there's probably about 100
• 34:24
  and 8200 people that work on the show.
• 34:26
  If you can do EastEnders, you can do any job.
• 34:29
  My job is the best job in the world.
• 34:31
  Why? Because the people here it, I
• 34:34
  know people say it a lot, but it they are genuinely family.
• 34:38
  And so how disruptive was it? Has the project happen?
• 34:42
  Because of building the front lot, we've spent many years now
• 34:48
  dealing with it, coping with it, and again, that's to do with
• 34:52
  communication as in managing it. So that I have weekly meetings
• 34:57
  with the project. I've now got weekly meetings
• 35:00
  with this new site owners to talk about when we're doing
• 35:02
  quiet scenes. And a quiet scene will be a 2
• 35:06
  hander, 2 people in the scene where they're just talking
• 35:08
  quietly around a table. But if you've got drilling going
• 35:12
  on or walls being knocked down or, I don't know, large
• 35:16
  machinery or or vehicles reversing, you know, just that
• 35:19
  beeping alone, it can be really disruptive to the concentration
• 35:22
  of every single member of the crew, whether it's an actor or
• 35:26
  a, or a producer or a sound operator or a camera operator.
• 35:30
  It's really disruptive. So that if they know in advance
• 35:33
  we're going to be doing emotional scenes or two, two
• 35:36
  hander scenes at that time in that studio, then they can to an
• 35:40
  extent work around it. We also have a stop knocking
• 35:43
  runner. So that would be somebody who
• 35:45
  liaises directly between production and the project to
• 35:49
  say we're just going for a take. Can you hold the work
• 35:52
  temporarily? I asked Rona for any advice she
• 35:55
  has on being a good communicator and storyteller.
• 35:58
  I think it's. Understanding your audience,
• 36:01
  understanding who you're communicating to and what the
• 36:06
  message is, what you are trying to communicate.
• 36:09
  So for something like EastEnders, we are communicating
• 36:12
  story. That's the story that we are
• 36:14
  communicating. For something like the project,
• 36:17
  I am trying to communicate to the project.
• 36:19
  Why actually we can't just stop rehearsing or stop going for
• 36:25
  tape because they need to do some drilling.
• 36:27
  It was a, there was a very fine balance between what's the most
• 36:31
  important thing, getting the building built or us carrying on
• 36:35
  making production. And there was a, there was a
• 36:38
  short period of time where it was discussed that because the
• 36:42
  project can't work through the night, could EastEnders perhaps
• 36:45
  work through the night as an alternative?
• 36:47
  And no, we can't. And for various reasons we
• 36:51
  couldn't. So it was just, I think it for
• 36:54
  them, it was understanding why we, we would stop, we would ask
• 36:59
  to stop the noise for the last rehearsal, not just the takes,
• 37:03
  the last rehearsal as well. Because otherwise sound can't
• 37:07
  rehearse if they're constantly rehearsing the drilling going on
• 37:10
  in the background or they're, as I say, the vehicle reversing
• 37:15
  it's under. Yeah, it is understanding what
• 37:18
  the message is and who your audience is, I think.
• 37:21
  Then she tells me about one of the most enjoyable moments of
• 37:24
  the project. One of the most enjoyable
• 37:27
  moments for me was the day we moved in on that Monday.
• 37:32
  It was the beginning of February and at the same time, literally
• 37:37
  as we're moving in, we are also making our 40th anniversary
• 37:40
  episode. So there was an awful lot going
• 37:41
  on. But the Monday we moved in, in
• 37:44
  the afternoon, I remember standing up there and looking
• 37:47
  down over and everybody was at their workstations and it looked
• 37:52
  like we've been here for years. It was astonishing.
• 37:55
  They'd all right, all unpacked, they'd all looked, it looked so
• 37:57
  settled and you just thought, you know, this is absolutely the
• 38:00
  right thing. It, it feels like we, we as a
• 38:04
  programme feel really invested in genuinely, it feels like a
• 38:09
  lot of love has gone into this place and you can, you can
• 38:12
  genuinely feel it. We leave Rhonda's office for a
• 38:15
  tour around the set, which I'm afraid I can't tell you about it
• 38:18
  in case I give any plot secrets away, but for any fans out
• 38:21
  there, I did get to visit Albert Square, the Queen Victoria and
• 38:24
  watch some filming in the Cafe, so sadly that's a wrap for
• 38:28
  today. I hope I've given you an idea of
• 38:30
  the unique challenges and considerations that face you as
• 38:33
  a project professional working projects in the creative sector.
• 38:36
  It's been super interesting for me and a childhood dream come
• 38:40
  true to go behind the scenes of EastEnders, and I hope you've
• 38:42
  enjoyed it too. Thanks again to John, Adams,
• 38:45
  Simon and Rona for joining me and to you for listening to the
• 38:48
  APM podcast. Just to mention, you can find
• 38:51
  out more about my EastEnders visit in the Autumn 2025 issue
• 38:54
  Project Journal. Don't miss it and don't forget
• 38:57
  to look out for more episodes or to rate and reviews.
• 38:59
  Wherever you get your podcasts, we'd welcome you to get in touch
• 39:02
  with your comments, feedback and suggestions by emailing us at
• 39:06
  apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk. This podcast has been brought to
• 39:11
  you by APM, the chartered body for the project profession.
• 39:15
  For more information on APM, visit apm.org.uk.