ISG to create a new museum at The Historic Dockyard Chatham
(19/03/2010)

As one of the UK’s leading maritime heritage destinations and containing 47 Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAM) on the 80-acre site, The Historic Dockyard is acknowledged as the world’s most complete example of a dockyard from the age of sail, and is now, together with its environs, on the UK government’s shortlist of potential world heritage sites.

ISG has taken on a £2 million refurbishment project at The Historic Dockyard Chatham to create a new museum and cultural venue to display and store nationally important maritime collections, especially models, art and other objects from two national museums – the National Maritime Museum and the Imperial war Museum.

As well as being one of Kent’s premier visitor attractions, The Historic Dockyard has featured as the backdrop to a number of television dramas and films including The World is Not Enough, The Mummy and the recently released Sherlock Holmes.

Working within a building, an SAM in itself, once used to support the building and repair of the Royal Navy’s ships, ISG will carry out a comprehensive fit out programme to create purpose-built high tech display galleries, a temporary exhibition space, education and interactive areas, together with state-of-the-art storage and research facilities.

The facility will meet the highest standards to house the national museum collections and international touring exhibitions. ISG is currently upgrading and installing new mechanical and electrical services to support the high specification exhibition space, with the project scheduled for completion in June 2010.

Craig Tatton, ISG’s managing director, commented: "Effective communication between client and contractor is an essential prerequisite when working within historically important environments. With multiple stakeholders often involved in these type of schemes, the ability to work collaboratively with every key partner is key to the ultimate success of the project, and this represents an area where ISG particularly excels and adds real value to developments.”