Kier has won a £140m repairs and maintenance contract with Genesis Housing Association.

Kier will carry out planned maintenance and cyclical works such as painting and decorating at all Genesis properties – a total of 33,000 homes. It will also provide responsive repairs for 10,000 Genesis’ homes in East London and the East of England. The remaining properties will continue to be serviced by Genesis’ in-house team.

The contract will run for four years initially. Through the tender process, Kier has committed to using local subcontractors and suppliers, and to providing employment and apprenticeship opportunities to Genesis residents.

Kier and Genesis are now mobilising the contract, and will be phasing in the start of external painting work from mid-July, with responsive repairs starting in mid-October.

Kier executive director John Wilkinson said: “Our priority is to work with Genesis staff and their customers to achieve a first-class service that we can all be proud of. We have a policy of ‘walking in customers’ shoes’, and over the coming months we will work with Genesis and the tenant groups already set up in order to ensure the highest levels of customer service.”

Genesis Housing Association chief executive Neil Hadden added: “This is an exciting new partnership that will help to ensure we’re meeting our residents’ needs. Customer focus was key throughout the tendering process, and we’re confident that in Kier we’ve found a provider that understands the requirements of our customers and the values that run through everything we do.”

Wates Construction has started work on the £100m Central Square development in Leeds.

An 11-storey office building is being constructed on a former Royal Mail site between Whitehall Road and Wellington Street in the city.

The joint developer is Roydhouse Properties and Marrico. Completion of the development is scheduled for early 2016.

Designed by DLA Design, the 220,000 sq ft mixed-use scheme will comprise 25,000 sq ft floor plates of flexible Grade A office space, retail and leisure provision and 128 car parking spaces.

Wates director David Price said: “We have worked closely with Marrico LLP and project architects, DLA Design, to ensure that we make a prompt start in delivering Central Square. The presence of tower cranes across Leeds is fast becoming a symbol of resurgence in the city’s development and Wates is very proud to be the main contractor in a scheme that is sure to be central to this growth.”

Marrico was formed in late 2013 by Mark Barnes, Colin Fell and Richard Bland. Central Square is their first development in this new venture with Steve Parkin and Gurnaik Chima. They have several other schemes in the pipeline and are looking for further development and investment opportunities, they said.

The Highways Agency has handed Telent Technology Services a trio of contracts, together worth more than £15m to maintain roadside technology on the M25 and one motorways and trunk roads in the east region and the southeast

All three contracts run for five years.

Telent now manages all routine and reactive maintenance for more than 12,000 technology assets, such as emergency roadside telephones, message signs, traffic signal sites, Highways Agency weather stations and CCTV cameras. 

Telent already has contracts to maintain traffic signals for a number of local authorities across the region, including Kent, West Sussex, Peterborough, Southampton, Luton, Cambridge and Medway.

Five leading contractors will be working together on a £184m Highways Agency contract to convert a 17 mile stretch of the Manchester Orbital route to a ‘smart’ motorway.

Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain and a BAM Nuttall/Morgan Sindall joint venture will all have to cooperate on the project as partners, which involves putting in cameras, gantries and variable message boards onto parts of the M60 and M62 motorways.

At peak, 1,000 construction workers will be on the project.

Balfour Beatty will take the lead on the project, overseeing the work of the other three contracting partners.

The idea of so-called ‘smart’ motorways, previously referred to as ‘managed motorways’ is that variable speed limits can be set to maintain smooth, steady traffic flow, thus reducing or eliminating the accelerating and braking that leads to snarl ups. The signage also allows the hard shoulder to be opened up to traffic as an additional lane at peak times.

The contract is being delivered under the Highways Agency National Major Projects Framework. The collaboration agreement is intended to reduce individual contractor risk and encourage knowledge sharing and best practice.

The M60 between junctions 8 and 12 will be upgraded to a controlled motorway with traffic flows managed by technology interventions responsive to the volume of traffic on the network.  The M62 between junctions 18 and 20 will become a four-lane, all lane running motorway by adapting the hard shoulder for continuous use and using electronic signs to manage traffic flows.

Construction work will start in July and is scheduled for completion by autumn 2017. Work includes installing and refurbishing gantries, new static and variable signs, lighting, concrete safety barriers, drainage and surfacing works. Some 200 electronic signs and 24 new CCTV cameras will go up.

Balfour Beatty executive chairman Steve Marshall said:  “We have been working with the Highways Agency for 20 years and look forward to building on that successful relationship.  This scheme will benefit the 180,000 road users that pass through this section of the motorway network every day. We are committed to lead this project in a collaborative way with our partners, employing local people and businesses in our supply chain.”

Costain chief executive Andrew Wyllie said: “The upgrading of our road network infrastructure is essential to maintaining and improving connectivity amongst the various regions of the UK, and thus to enabling the nation’s economy to grow. We look forward to working in collaboration with the Highways Agency and with our partners to deliver this project, using the latest in new and innovative traffic management technology.”

Carillion chief executive Richard Howson said: “As a leading supplier to the Highways Agency we are delighted to have been selected for this latest Smart Motorway scheme.  We look forward to working with the Highways Agency and our delivery partners to increase capacity and improve journey times and safety on the M60 and M62.”

Balfour Beatty has been awarded a £16m contract by Network Rail Infrastructure to deliver a series of substations and associated civil works associated with the Crossrail project.

The contract involves the detailed design, construction and commissioning of eight 25kV auto transformer substations and associated civil works located between Shenfield and Pudding Mill Lane in the east and north east of London, and the Kensal Green auto transformer feeder station and Maidenhead, Berkshire.

Work starts this month and should complete in 2017.

The National Trust is holding a supplier engagement day on Thursday 3rd July for builders in the northwest region.

Building trades are invited to go along and meet building surveyors from the National Trust at its offices in Altrincham to learn about procuring work on some of the charity’s famous historic sites. Planned work involves extensions, repairs and refurbishments at estates in Cheshire, including Dunham Massey and Quarry Bank, as well as areas of the Lake District. The scope of opportunities includes roofing, scaffolding, utilities and timber and masonry repairs.

Phyllis Bayley, lead building surveyor at the National Trust, said: “As a national charity we look after a large number of listed and historic buildings across the UK, and are responsible for their upkeep. Local contractors have a vested interest in their own communities, including National Trust sites on their doorstep. This event will allow us to engage with skilled SME contractors in the region.”

The event, organised by Constructionline, is free but registration is recommended. For more information or to register interest, go to www.constructionline.co.uk/events.

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