Balfour Beatty Living Places has won a £103 million highways maintenance contract from Telford and Wrekin Council. The contract is initially for seven years, with the option to extend it for a further seven years. “We are delighted to have been awarded this contract by Telford and Wrekin Council; it
The £5 million contract to deliver phase one and two of the East Leeds Orbital Route has been awarded to Balfour Beatty by Leeds City Council. Works will include improvements to a number of existing Outer Ring Road junctions and the widening to three junctions along the A6120 Ring Road.
Balfour Beatty, the British multinational infrastructure group has been selected as the main contractor for a project which is considered to be the largest capital developments to be undertaken in the UK by a university. The construction company has a wealth of experience working on projects in the education sector,
Balfour Beatty, the British multinational infrastructure group, and civil engineering company has revealed that they have managed to move back into profit for the first half of 2017. This year the company has recorded a pre-tax profit of £12 million. In the same period last year, the company was in
The latest report from Balfour Beatty has urged the government to maintain a commitment to devolution in the autumn statement to stop the issue of devolution from “slipping off the radar.” The contractor’s report, entitled ‘Where now for combined authorities?’, outlines 10 recommendations made to maintain the devolution agenda in
Balfour Beatty has announced that its managing director for the north of Scotland is retiring after a 40 year career in the industry. Aberdeen-based George Hood recently oversaw the completion of the £22.3 million Third Don Crossing for the giant construction and civil engineering firm. The major project marked one of the last
Balfour Beatty has acquired railway surveying equipment manufacturer Omnicom Engineering. Balfour Beatty said that the acquisition will enhance its position in the rail market of the UK and will expand the global reach of Omnicom Engineering’s asset monitoring systems. Omnicom Engineering, founded in 1995, is a UK firm that specialises
Balfour Beatty has secured the contract to build the new £21 million Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow, which is being built at Bellahouston Park on land gifted by Glasgow City Council. It will be the UK’s first hospice that will follow the Scandinavian Sengetun model of care,
Balfour Beatty and Equitix have sealed the deal for the £162.9 million Humber Gateway offshore transmission project (OFTO). The high voltage electricity transmission link will connect Eon’s 219MW offshore wind farm in the North Sea, 8km from the East Yorkshire coast, to the onshore transmission grid. The 73 turbines have
Leading international infrastructure group, Balfour Beatty has signed on the dotted line to deliver One Nine Elms, part of Europe’s largest ever regeneration project, Nine Elms which will see the transformation of 3km of London’s riverside into a sleek residential and commercial district. The firm has signed a preconstruction agreement
Balfour Beatty Living Places has won a £103 million highways maintenance contract from Telford and Wrekin Council. The contract is initially for seven years, with the option to extend it for a further seven years. “We are delighted to have been awarded this contract by Telford and Wrekin Council; it builds on our trusted expertise in highways services. We look forward to working closely with the Council and the local community to deliver tangible improvements across the Borough,” said Steve Helliwell, Managing Director of Balfour Beatty Living Places. Working together with the Council, Balfour Beatty will be maintaining the Borough’s 626 miles of highways and 743 miles of footpaths, providing drainage cleansing services, winter fritting and reactive highways maintenance as required. Moreover, Balfour Beatty Living Places will work closely with the council to help deliver its £20 million capital investment programme of planned highways and transport projects to improve roads, paths and highways structures. This will be delivered over the first two years of the contract. Approximately 48 full-time employees will be hired during the works, including four apprentices and graduates. “This is a key contract for the Council at a time when we are investing very heavily in improving roads and footpaths across the Borough through our £45 million Pride in Our Community programme. The savings from the contract will have no effect on the major capital investment that we are making between now and April 2021 targeting roads in particular,” added Councilor Hilda Robert, Cabinet Member for Transport, Roads and Broadband. With work due to commence in April 2019, this partnership is expected to bring an estimated saving of approximately £200,000 a year for the Council through an enhanced management of services.
The £5 million contract to deliver phase one and two of the East Leeds Orbital Route has been awarded to Balfour Beatty by Leeds City Council. Works will include improvements to a number of existing Outer Ring Road junctions and the widening to three junctions along the A6120 Ring Road. Balfour Beatty will also be responsible for the design of the £87 million 7km East Leeds Orbital Route. The initial highway work forms a part of the wider East Leeds Extension (ELE) programme, which on completion will be the largest road scheme in the city since the 1970s. “We are delighted to have been awarded the initial contract to commence improvement works to the East Leeds Orbital Route,” said Thomas Edgcumbe, Balfour Beatty Managing Director for its North and Midlands regional business. “We are looking forward to working in partnership with Leeds City Council and making a significant and sustainable contribution to the local economy and community. We have a wealth of experience in the design and delivery of highways schemes and this award is testament to the success of our work across the UK,” he continued. With work due to commence next month, phase one and two are expected to be completed next summer. Through the project, Balfour Beatty will make a significant and sustainable contribution to the local economy, engaging with Employment Leeds to deliver employment and skills workshops for the surrounding community. This contract award follows the robust contingency measures taken by Leeds City Council to deal with the original supplier, Carillion, being unable to deliver the work. The East Leeds Orbital Route is being been financed through the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s ‘West Yorkshire-plus Transport Fund’. The Fund is part of the Leeds City Region Growth Deal, a £1 billion package of Government investment through the Combined Authority and Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) that will accelerate growth and create jobs across Leeds City Region.
Balfour Beatty, the British multinational infrastructure group has been selected as the main contractor for a project which is considered to be the largest capital developments to be undertaken in the UK by a university. The construction company has a wealth of experience working on projects in the education sector, and will be able to put all of the specialist knowledge that has been developed by the company into this milestone project that will combine all of the Manchester University sites into one site. The contract that has been signed by Balfour Beatty has been valued at £287 million. The University of Manchester has have contracted the British company to complete the construction of the new Manchester Engineering Campus Development. This new education facility is expected to take four years and is a part of a wider scheme of works that will take place over the course of approximately 10 years. The new Manchester Engineering Campus Development will offer new premises for the university’s engineering schools. These facilities will include teaching spaces as well as space for research institutes. In order to complete this significant construction project in four years, Balfour Beatty will be looking to make the most of offsite construction solutions. It has been predicted however, that even with the utilisation of offsite production there will still be up to around 1,000 construction and tradespeople on site during the development. As well as using off site manufacturing, the project will use the latest BIM technology in order to ensure that the project is being carried out in the most efficient way possible. It is hoped that when the development is complete, new way of educating the future generation of engineers will be created. The result will hopefully be a world-class estate that will be beneficial to the students as well as the staff and visitors to the campus.
Balfour Beatty, the British multinational infrastructure group, and civil engineering company has revealed that they have managed to move back into profit for the first half of 2017. This year the company has recorded a pre-tax profit of £12 million. In the same period last year, the company was in a worse position, recording a £15 million loss. This amazing turnaround is great news for the group, who have gone through a bad patch with a number of construction contracts not delivering their expected results. The positive financial results for Balfour Beatty has come as the management have been making changes and cuts as part of their Build to Last programme. The business has become more streamlined, offering their services to a narrower market in order to make the most of the capabilities they offer. Through this transformation the company has become more profitable, and these results have surprisingly been made without the disposal of any material investment. In the UK the company has managed to turn itself around from a £69 million loss to a £2-million-pound profit. Another explanation for their recovery is Balfour Beatty’s bidding tactics for contracts. During the company’s loss years, the company appeared to be being too aggressive in their bidding, practically removing all of their margins and then making a loss on the project. With margins vital to maintaining a healthy profit in the construction industry, the company have had to alter this approach in order to improve their financial circumstances before it got any worse. Being more selective when choosing the contracts they bid on has also allowed the multinational infrastructure and civil engineering group to fill their books with contracts offering higher margins and a greater likelihood for profit. It would appear that in order to function successfully as a large multinational organisation the quality of the contract wins out over the number of contracts won.
The latest report from Balfour Beatty has urged the government to maintain a commitment to devolution in the autumn statement to stop the issue of devolution from “slipping off the radar.” The contractor’s report, entitled ‘Where now for combined authorities?’, outlines 10 recommendations made to maintain the devolution agenda in the face of political uncertainty resulting from the EU referendum and the resultant government shake up. The top recommendations made are for the government to maintain its commitment to devolution and to remove the uncertainty around EU funding for local authorities. Up until 2020, the EU has allocated £5.3 billion of regeneration funds to local councils, however the future of this funding is still not clear as the UK continues to negotiate its way out of the EU. Mike Reade, Regional Director at Balfour Beatty, said that a possible loss of funding is “certainly a concern” for local government and there is a danger that the devolution agenda may “slip off the radar” if the government places all of its focus on negotiating its way out of the EU. Reade commented: “It is the uncertainty that hurts. If there is uncertainty on policy and uncertainty on funding, then there is a danger that the momentum of devolution is lost.” Mr Reade said devolution is important for contractors because it has encouraged local government to become more commercially aware. This in turn has encouraged local councils to engage with the private sector in making investment decisions. He said: “From our point of view, discussions taking place around public and private partnerships means we’re starting to see longer programmes of work being talked about. “If we get to enter into some closer public/private partnership relationships and get more visibility about future programmes, we can be more confident about our future.”
Balfour Beatty has announced that its managing director for the north of Scotland is retiring after a 40 year career in the industry. Aberdeen-based George Hood recently oversaw the completion of the £22.3 million Third Don Crossing for the giant construction and civil engineering firm. The major project marked one of the last chapters of a career that started for Mr Hood as a 19-year old trainee quantity surveyor in 1975 with the firm Alexander Hall, which would later become Hall & Tawse. This was eventually be bought by the Scottish construction firm, Mansell, a part of Balfour Beatty since 2003. When he started out Mr Hood took home a salary of £1,301 from an industry that was “booming” in the north east of the country, even before the discovery of oil in the North Sea. He said: “We were putting up lots of multi-storey flats for the council” and the sector was also meeting the needs of a whisky industry that demanded the building of bonded warehouses. But it was with the oil boom of the 1980s a construction frenzy began. “All of a sudden Aberdeen was flooded with Yanks – high rollers”, said Mr Hood. “We were busy busy, building all the sort of stuff you would get in a frontier-style town.” Office blocks and hotels went up for the oil industry executives and workers, followed by a boom in pubs, nightclubs and restaurants. Within eight years of starting in the industry, Mr Hood was project surveyor on a number of large Aberdeen office developments that would transform the city, including at the Hill of Rubislaw for ConocoPhilips, Marathon Oil and Britoil. He would later also project manage the Bon Accord shopping centre and oversaw the demolition of George Street. One of the ironies of his career was building a hospitality suite at Ibrox Stadium, despite being a life-long Celtic fan.
Balfour Beatty has acquired railway surveying equipment manufacturer Omnicom Engineering. Balfour Beatty said that the acquisition will enhance its position in the rail market of the UK and will expand the global reach of Omnicom Engineering’s asset monitoring systems. Omnicom Engineering, founded in 1995, is a UK firm that specialises in developing vehicle borne software and hardware platforms for asset survey, inspection and monitoring. The business is based in York and Derby, with clients including Network Rail in the UK and Australia’s largest rail freight operator, Aurizon. Omnicom Engineering specialises in video and laser surveys, as well as high-speed video inspection, such as OmniVision which allows clients to replace manual track inspection with automated machine vision from a high speed vehicle. Eight hours of data can be captured at speeds over 160km/h and processed within 48 hours. Among Balfour Beatty’s existing systems are high -speed laser and inertial measurement of track geometry, infrastructure gauge, points condition monitoring and software solutions to visualise condition and support asset management decisions. Managing Director of Balfour Beatty’s UK rail business, Mark Bullock, commented: “Omnicom Engineering is a true innovator which is benefiting from over 20 years of investment in research and development. “We will leverage this expertise alongside the high speed laser measurement technology that already exists within Balfour Beatty, to provide unrivalled technical solutions to clients in the growing high-speed and unattended data collection market in which we see opportunities for increasing our business. “Together, Omnicom and Balfour Beatty’s range of asset management solutions will offer an unrivalled richness of information to support the maintenance of roads and railways across the world.” Meanwhile, last month Balfour Beatty started work on the construction of a 19 storey tower in Portland in the US state of Oregon. The tower for BPM Real Estate will be home to a 180-room Radisson Red hotel and will also have 175,000 square feet of office space and over 2,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
Balfour Beatty has secured the contract to build the new £21 million Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow, which is being built at Bellahouston Park on land gifted by Glasgow City Council. It will be the UK’s first hospice that will follow the Scandinavian Sengetun model of care, which puts placemaking at the heart of its approach, and provides space for privacy, dignity and compassionate care for all ages. The hospice is set to open in 2018. Rhona Baillie, Chief Executive, commented: “I am delighted to announce that Balfour Beatty will help us realise our dream to build a 21st-century healthcare facility for the people of Glasgow. This is a major step forward as work now starts at the site.” Balfour Beatty regional managing director Hector Macaulay added: “The way the community has pulled together over the last four years has been really impressive, raising vast sums of money to bring this state-of-the-art facility to fruition. “We’re pleased to have got construction underway, and to be working closely with The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice to deliver a facility which will provide high quality care for patients and their families.” The Glasgow office of law firm Pinsent Masons has provided pro bono work on the building project. Ryder Architecture’s Alastair Forbes will lead the team of architects and he commented: “We are delighted to see construction works commence and the realisation of this unique new hospice building. The project team have worked closely with The Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice over a long period of time to reach this moment and we look forward to working with Balfour Beatty Construction Services in this exciting next stage.” The hospice still has to raise £2.7m of the £21m needed to finish the build. To donate, visit www.ppwh.org.uk/donate or text BRICK to 70660.
Balfour Beatty and Equitix have sealed the deal for the £162.9 million Humber Gateway offshore transmission project (OFTO). The high voltage electricity transmission link will connect Eon’s 219MW offshore wind farm in the North Sea, 8km from the East Yorkshire coast, to the onshore transmission grid. The 73 turbines have the capability to generate enough electricity for around 170,000 homes every year. Ofgem awarded the Balfour Beatty Equitix Consortium the preferred bidder status in September 2015 to own and operate the Humber Gateway offshore transmission link. For the next 20 years, the consortium will own and operate the link to Eon’s Humber Gateway wind farm, while Balfour Beatty will invest £12.5 million of the total required equity of £21 million. Balfour Beatty’s power transmission and distribution business will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the OFTO’s assets, including one offshore and one onshore substation and two cable circuits consisting of 18km of subsea and 30km of land cable. Ian Rylatt, Chief Executive of Balfour Beatty Investments, commented: “This is our fourth OFTO contract to reach financial close and further establishes our position in the offshore transmission market. Our technical expertise ensures we can efficiently and effectively, support the government’s targets to meet more of the UK’s energy needs through renewable sources.” Among Balfour Beatty’s other offshore transmission investments are the £352 million Gwynt y Mor OFTO and the £164 million Thanet OFTO 2014. The European Investment Bank will provide an £82 million 19 year loan for the Humber Gateway OFTO, which represents almost 50% of eligible projects costs and the long term EIB loan is alongside senior debt provided by three commercial banks. Last month, Balfour Beatty restored its dividend and reduced losses in a sign that the company is returning to health after a tough two years that saw the construction group issue a series of profit warnings and fend off a takeover attempt.
Leading international infrastructure group, Balfour Beatty has signed on the dotted line to deliver One Nine Elms, part of Europe’s largest ever regeneration project, Nine Elms which will see the transformation of 3km of London’s riverside into a sleek residential and commercial district. The firm has signed a preconstruction agreement with Chinese developer Wanda One to build what will be two highly-exclusive apartment blocks in Vauxhall, London. Developed Wanda One had previously held CI-One Construction (an amalgamation of Interserve and China State Construction Engineering Corporation) as firm favourite to complete the build. However, following the breakdown of communication during the negotiation of the £550 main works contract, Wanda One put the tender for One Nine Elms and back on the market earlier this year and it was snapped up by Balfour Beatty. The pair will now commence ironing out the finer details of the contract with the hope of signing a final contract by the end of 2016, ready to commence works early next year. Tim Gawthorn, Director at Wanda One (UK), confirmed reports that Balfour Beatty had signed the preconstruction contract, calling it “another important milestone” in the development of One Nine Elms. He expressed his delight at the new partnership and is hopeful that, together, they can deliver the iconic London development. Dean Banks, Managing Director of Balfour Beatty’s UK Construction Services business echoed Gawthorn’s sentiment, crediting Wanda One and expressing his excitement to get the “fantastic project” going. He said that that Balfour Beatty successful tender reflects the “depth and breadth of experience” that the firm possesses in the large-scale residential sector. One Nine Elms is expected to be completed in 2018. It will be composed of two skyscrapers, 45-storeys and 60-storeys high, and incorporate more than 400 new apartments as well as a five-star hotel. Considering the problems Wanda One faced working with CI-One Construction, construction will doubtless be fast-tracked with a view to finishing works on time.
