Consultant team scoops £500m MPs' offices revamp

A consortium led by WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff and including consultant Gleeds has won the £500m revamp of MPs’ offices in Westminster, known as the Northern Estate Programme.

The teams is understood to have won the project, programme and cost management role, beating bidders Turner & Townsend, Arcadis, a joint venture between Mace and Aecom and a team featuring Lendlease. Meanwhile, Aecom has picked up the engineering role on the programme.

Architect BDP scooped the lead design role on the project last month. Procurement for a main works contractor for the Northern Estate will start early next year.

The works include restoring the grade I-listed Norman Shaw North and grade II-listed Norman Shaw South buildings - both of which are now over 100 years old - along with 1 Derby Gate and 1 Parliament Street - a pair of grade II-listed adjoining buildings dating from the 1880s - and the Cannon Row residences.

It will also take in Richmond House, currently occupied by the Department of Health, which is the proposed new temporary home for the House of Commons while £4bn restoration works are carried out to the Palace of Westminster.

The Northern Estate Programme could be combined with the Palace of Westminster works at a later date, after a joint committee of MPs and peers recommended the jobs be managed together in September. Building understands the client panels overseeing both programme of works have already started meeting together as they start to collaborate more closely.

Around 15,300 sqm of office space will be refurbished in the Northern Estate together with external spaces linking the individual buildings, with works due to complete in the early 2020s.

Labour MP Chris Byrant, the parliamentary joint committee member and spokesperson for the restoration of the palace, said at an event at the Palace of Westminster last month that MPs and their staff would likely temporarily occupy Richmond House while refurbishment work is carried out to other buildings in the Northern Estate, prior to it being occupied by the House of Commons.

He added that he would like the restoration of the Palace of Westminster and programme of works in parliament’s Northern Estate combined into one overarching programme of works on the parliamentary estate because the works in the Northern Estate need to be completed before the works on the Palace can begin.

Bryant said the Department of Health was in the process of moving out of the building and that the Commons were close to securing and that it was hoped the works to the Northern Estate buildings including grade I-listed Norman Shaw North and grade II-listed Norman Shaw South buildings, along with 1 Derby Gate and 1 Parliament Street and Cannon Row residences, would be underway by the end of this parliament

BDP is already working on the refurbishment of Whitehall’s Old Admiralty building on Horse Guards Parade for the Department for Education.

WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff declined to comment. Gleeds and Parliament have been contacted for comment.