Relocating over 900 employees from Bracknell was the daunting prospect facing the organisation when it started searching for a new headquarters three years ago.
The organisation had grown so much that its custom-built offices in Bracknell, Berkshire, which dated back to 1961, could no longer cope four decades later.
The requirement for new state-of-the-art facilities was unequivocal. Crucial to the move was the need to ensure that the Met Office stayed at the forefront of UK weather forecasting whilst at the same time reducing running costs and improving performance. The desire to be better able to attract new staff and provide the existing workforce with a modern, environmentally-friendly building in an attractive location were also key elements.
Exeter proved that it more than amply fitted the bill with a skilled workforce, attractive location and effective working relationships between the local city council, the South West Regional Development Agency, the business community and the university.
Met Office Chief Executive Peter Ewins, said: "When I came to Exeter three years ago I was very impressed by the facilities that the area had to offer, and by the enthusiasm shown by local officials in encouraging us to move here."
"Everything that has happened since then has justified our decision and I'm sure that our new home will provide a firm foundation for the Met Office's business for many years to come."
The £150 million move to the new 13.4-hectare base in Exeter, one of the most challenging information technology projects ever to have taken place in Europe, finally became a reality in October 2003. In the process, more than 3,000 construction workers and staff had been employed on the site, moving an amount of earth, which would have filled over 40 miles of skips placed end to end.
The Met Office's new building has 700 doors and is manufactured from 2,000 tonnes of steel (equivalent to the weight of 250 single decker buses), and the project is expected to boost Exeter's annual economy to the tune of £64.9 million.
Its modern IT infrastructure has allowed the Met Office to further improve the way it handles the huge amounts of weather data and customer information encountered on a daily basis. Most of the staff employed in Bracknell have also relocated to Exeter, ensuring a wealth of skills and experience has not been lost.
Staff are now able to work and communicate with each other under one roof - previously operations had been carried out at numerous sites around Bracknell and Reading.
Additional back-up technology has also ensured that the Met Office can provide an even better service for its customers. One of just two World Area Forecast Centres for Aviation is now based at the Met Office's Exeter headquarters. This means that a plane flying from Delhi to Sydney is likely to use a weather forecast which has been produced in Exeter.
