The team behind The Cube £75m mixed-use development in Birmingham has been forced to put up £1m in advance to ensure the cladding work is done on time.
The payment, to Germany's Haga by the construction arm of Birmingham Development Company, could be a sign of things to come as subcontractors crank up the pressure on main contractors. Haga will get £1m now and the remaining £10m once the scheme's complete.
Work on London's tallest building, the 310m Shard, has been further delayed as lawyers and financiers attempt to tie up the deal. Mace tendered a £350m fixed-price after the Teignmore development team got cold feet on the CM contract.
HGB is tipped to win a £140m contract to build one of the UK's largest laboratories. The contractor's thought to have beaten Laing O'Rourke to secure the contract to replace the Laboratory for Molecular Biology facility, which forms part of a huge biomedical centre in Cambridge. Designed by Scottish architect RMJM, the lab will cover over 30,000 sq m and house four departments and 600 staff.
Thames Water has advertised the £300m-£375m first phase of the £2.2bn Thames Tideway tunnel project. The design and build contract is for a spur tunnel between Abbey Mills Pumping station and Beckton Sewage Works in east London. Phase 1 will begin in March 2009 and is set for completion by June 2014. Contractors have until January 12 to express interest in the project.
Bovis Lend Lease has ditched plans to bid for the £375m Southmead PFI hospital in Bristol, leaving Carillion and Skanska to fight it out. A spokesman for the Bovis-led Catalyst consortium said the team's design wasn't sufficiently developed to continue the bid.
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) said the construction schedule for the 2012 Olympics is on track after demolition work on the 'Big 5' venue sites was completed. "In 2008 we will change gear as we enter the start of the 'Big Build' phase with construction beginning in earnest in the summer," boasted ODA chairman John Armitt.
Source
Construction Manager
