Tier ones to deliver big jobs for Scottish university

Six large contractors will deliver large construction jobs for the University of Glasgow after winning places on a £500m framework.

CN100 firms Balfour Beatty, Galliford Try, John Graham, McLaughlin & Harvey, Morgan Sindall and Robertson were named on Lot 3 of the institution’s Construction Framework.

This will see the six companies compete for individual jobs worth more than £7m on the university’s estate. This workload is expected to total about £325m over a maximum of six years, according to a contract notice released last week by the university.

AKP Scotland, Clark Contracts, Morgan Sindall, Morris & Spottiswood, Redpath Construction and Taylor & Fraser will deliver projects worth between £500,000 and £7m through the £100m Lot 2 of the deal.

And Lot 1 will see AKP Scotland, Clark Contracts, Morris & Spottiswood, MPMH Construction, Redpath Construction and Taylor & Fraser work on schemes worth less than £500,000, which are expected to total £75m.

Multiplex was last year lined up to build a £300m learning and research building at the University of Glasgow. The contractor has been lead contractor on the university’s £1.3bn campus development programme since 2017, after beating Lendlease to the job.

The programme was planned as a decade-long effort that would see the creation of a new campus on a 5.7 hectare site, formerly the site of the Western Infirmary.

According to industry insight specialist Glenigan, education project starts and detailed planning approvals experienced a poor three months to January 2025, declining against the preceding three months and previous year.

However, main contract awards fared slightly better, increasing on the previous year but remaining below the preceding three months.

At £135m, or 12 per cent, universities accounted for the second-largest share of education starts in the three-month period, but this total still represented a 44 per cent decline against the previous year.

Scotland accounted for the largest share of education-construction planning approvals of any UK region, despite experiencing a significant decline against the previous year.