Winner due by summer

Four firms are working up bids to redevelop the IBM building on London’s South Bank, Building understands.

Stanhope is development manager on the project and has asked Skanska, Mace, Multiplex and Laing O’Rourke to price the £120m deal being let as a design and build contract.

Lendlease and Sir Robert McAlpine had also been speaking to the firm about the job but the pair, both on the shortlist for the £400m redevelopment of the nearby ITV building called 72 Upper Ground, are no longer in the running.

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Source: Secchi Smith

AHMM’s revised proposals for Denys Lasdun’s IBM building which were OK’d last summer

A winner for the IBM scheme, known as 76 Upper Ground, is due in early summer.

The revamp has been drawn up by AHMM and its original proposals for the office complex, completed in 1983, were floated in early 2020 and envisaged the creation of an extra 20,000sq m of space through the addition of two new storeys.

But the scheme for Wolfe Commercial Properties Southbank – owned by the United Arab Emirates-based Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group – was drawn up before the building was given a grade II listing later that year.

AHMM’s revised proposals, approved last summer, cut the amount of new space down to 11,000 sq m, which Wolfe said will “sensitively restore and upgrade the building”.

Consultants working on the scheme include QS Exigere, Heyne Tillett Steel as structural engineer and Watkins Payne as M&E engineer.

IBM is swapping the Brutalist landmark for new offices at the nearby Shell Centre with a return to its long-standing home believed to be still up in the air.

Three firms, Keltbray, Careys and Morrisroe, are chasing the £20m enabling works package which will kick off the redevelopment when IBM moves its remaining staff out of the building in the summer.

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