Balfour Beatty preferred bidder for £450m BSF

15 October 2009

Balfour Beatty has been appointed as preferred bidder by Blackburn with Darwen and Bolton Councils for their £450m PPP Building Schools for the Future programme.

The 25-year concession involves the delivery of a major capital investment programme comprising the extensive building or remodelling of nine schools in Blackburn and Darwen by 2015. It will also be building or remodelling 15 schools, two special schools and seven pupil referral units in Bolton. All construction and FM will be carried out by Balfour Beatty. ICT services across all the schools will be delivered in conjunction with Northgate, a leading supplier of ICT solutions to the UK education sector.
Balfour Beatty will invest equity of £3.3m into the delivery of the first school, Pleckgate High School, with the potential for a total of up to £20m equity investment in the programme as a whole.
Earlier this year Balfour Beatty announced it had reached financial close on the £200m Southwark BSF PPP contract which will deliver a major capital investment programme over three phases covering 12 schools across the Borough.
It has also recently been awarded construction contracts worth the £77m to build new student accommodation at the University of Exeter, in partnership with University Partnerships Programme Limited (UPP), as part of the University’s £400m capital programme, and Lincolnshire County Council has appointed Balfour Beatty for three design and build contracts totalling £57m as part of the National Academies Framework.