Balfour Beatty, Ferrovial Mace and Morgan Sindall won the competition from seven other contractors including Skanska, Laing O’Rourke, Vinci and Costain, and were announced as preferred bidders for the four major packages.
For the five-year programme, each of the four winning contractors have been assigned a specific chunk of work, thus taking on the role of “delivery integrator”.
According to the current deal, Balfour Beatty is responsible for works in terminals one, two and four; Mace will carry out works at terminals three and five; Morgan Sindall and Ferrovial will work in the southern and northern halves of the airport respectively.
The Heathrow £2bn investment plan has been divided into four separate packages; each package is worth between £250m and £375. The amount of construction jobs created is still unknown.
The decision to select a single firm for each part of the airport revamp is a significant change of procurement strategy for the UK’s busiest airport, which has previously used framework agreements to procure construction work on a project-by-project basis.
Additionally, consultant firms Atkins, Arup, Jacobs have been appointed to other roles on Heathrow’s Q6 investment plans, and will collaborate with the four successful bidders in the delivery of the whole scheme.
Gardiner & Theobald has been given a new role as independent fund surveyor in which it will keep track of project costs and timescale of construction programme.