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HAALO was the funder’s Lead Construction Advisor on New Victoria, also known as New Vic — the first Build to Rent scheme for Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), and an RICS North West 2024 award winner.
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New Vic regenerated an under-used inner-city brownfield site next to Manchester Victoria station — creating 520 homes in two connected towers of 21 and 26 storeys and providing the first landscaped amenity the plot had seen in over a century.
It was PIC's first Build to Rent development, forward-funded in a £130m deal, and delivered with Muse Developments and Vinci Construction.
A landmark regeneration in its own right — injecting some £2m a week into the Greater Manchester economy through construction. The development was the RICS North West Awards 2024 winner for Residential Development.
Protecting investment through technical leadership.
HAALO acted as Lead Construction Advisor to PIC — providing technical due diligence, development management and project monitoring and oversight through the design and construction delivery stages.
HAALO works to the principle of driving value through early risk appraisal: establishing and mitigating risk early to reduce the cost impact of late design change, and holding the standard from sub-structure to handover so the funder took on the asset it was promised.
Early technical intervention that improved the asset.
HAALO's contribution went beyond safeguarding the funder's position. Early in the design, HAALO saw that the two towers — drawn as independent buildings, each with its own reception, resident amenity and plant, lacking inter-connection and with only a slim external pedestrian bridge connecting one of the towers to the main streetside— could be unified to create a socially cohesive building. HAALO proposed a two-storey bridge providing additional internal amenity, along with a resident-accessed landscaped roof on Level 1. Against initial reservations over structural complexity, HAALO challenged the design team with proving its viability.
PIC supported the initial proposal and approved the additional funding to deliver it. Centralising services into a single building freed space for a grand 'Edwardian Orangery'-style reception, with lounges, coffee areas, a games room and co-working — one shared amenity hub in place of duplicated facilities, along with a 460m² roof-level landscaped garden that now distinguishes the scheme, part of the first green space the site had seen in over a century. The result improved the building as a whole and provides residents a genuine sense of community and home.
HAALO's oversight also protected the funder from risks resulting from the Victorian culvert on the River Irk, that dissected the site — a major part of Manchester's flood defences, which the scheme was publicly committed to safeguarding through design resilience.
At RIBA Stage 3+, the sub-structure had been set out from the culvert's internal dimensions rather than its external wall thickness, placing the proposed piling too close. HAALO identified the discrepancy through technical review of the proposed legal arrangements and advised to consider a redesign of the piling and regulatory resubmission with the Culvert's owners before piling continued — so the enhanced protection the development had promised was to be delivered.
Long-term value proven in operation.
New Vic completed in 2023, let fully and ahead of schedule, and won the Residential Development category at the RICS North West Awards 2024.
For PIC, it delivered a landmark first Build to Rent asset to the standard a long-term institutional holder requires — technically sound, with the funder's position protected and its value enhanced throughout.
Three years after completion, New Vic remains fully let and among Manchester's most highly rated rental schemes, with over 100 five-star resident reviews, and remains the largest build-to-rent-led forward-funding transaction inside or outside London.
Design & construction of 520 residential apartments in two high-rise blocks, with communal and commercial facilities.
- RIBA Stage 3+ design review.
- Discrepancy log.
- Link-bridge feasibility and amenity consolidation analysis.
- RICS North West Awards 2024.
