Gilbert-Ash has paved the way for thousands of workers to return to Belfast city centre after completing one of the most ground-breaking projects to be undertaken in Northern Ireland in recent years.

The £14million Merchant Square project has created 200,000 sq ft of Grade A office space over nine floors in the heart of the city. The offices can accommodate up to 3,000 employees at the former Oyster and Royston buildings, in the business district and adjacent to the City Hall.

Merchant Square represents Belfast’s biggest ever private sector office letting deal and on July 19 PwC moved into their new state-of-the-art Northern Ireland headquarters.

Gilbert-Ash Project Director, Rodney Coalter said this was a stand-out project, at what is one of Belfast city centre’s flagship buildings.

Rodney said: “In terms of pure fit-out projects, I would go so far as to say this was one of the best completed by Gilbert-Ash.

“There was a very high standard of collaboration right across this project and that included our supply teams and the client team.

“The client was delighted with the finished project which is so important to us at Gilbert-Ash. It was a fast fit-out programme, and we had the major hurdles of the pandemic and Brexit to overcome but everyone on the team rolled their sleeves up and met any problems head on.

“In terms of the issues we faced with Brexit, we had a lot of bespoke product throughout the building which came from Europe. This proved to be a very slow process as it had to make its way through France to Dover and then across to Northern Ireland, so it had two sets of checks with all the paperwork that entailed.

“But with detailed planning and close collaboration with the client team and our sub-contractors we were able to work around these sorts of issues.”