Sir Robert McAlpine, Kier, BAM and Volker Stevin to battle it out for £50m temporary wharf job

Contractors Costain, Sir Robert McAlpine, Dean & Dyball, Kier, BAM and Volker Stevin are on the shortlist for a £50m job to build a temporary wharf at the UK’s first nuclear power plant in decades at Hinkley in Somerset.

Costain and Sir Robert McAlpine are working in a consortium as are Kier and BAM, who are already working on a £100m earth works job on the site for French power company EDF.

Work on the wharf is due to start in 2013, but first it must be granted permission from either the Marine Management Organisation or Infrastructure Planning Committee.

The MMO is due to make a decision on the application within the next couple of months. However, if EDF’s application is not successful it could still be approved by the IPC

EDF will make a final investment decision on the power plant as a whole, including the wharf, later this year.

“There’s a lot of engineering to do on the wharf,” said EDF’s Hinkley construction director Nigel Cann, explaining why they had let the contract before the investment decision. “To build the jetty you have to do a level of earth works. So it’s unlikely to start before 2013,” he added.

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