Laing O’Rourke decides to make tilt at £570m Birmingham HS2 station

Laing O’Rourke has decided to bid for the rerun job to build a new HS2 station at Birmingham Curzon Street.

The firm has been carrying out enabling works in joint venture with Murphy on the northern section of the first phase of the route between London and Birmingham but pulled out of the race to build the HS2 station at Euston eventually won by a Mace/Dragados team in a deal worth £1.5bn saying the job was too risky.

The Mace team is also on the three-strong shortlist for Curzon Street along with Bam Ferrovial, a joint venture between Bam’s civils arm, Bam Nuttall, and Spanish contractor Ferrovial. The team missed out on the Euston deal.

Earlier this year, O’Rourke’s outgoing finance director Stewart McIntyre told Building it “could not get comfortable on our risk assessments” for the job but said it was looking at Curzon Street, the main HS2 station in Birmingham, a project that also includes overstation work.

The job has a £570m price tag and at the time McIntyre said: “We would be interested [but] we will not do it if the contract is too onerous.”

Last summer HS2 was forced to scrap the process to find a contractor to build the station because not enough firms were prepared to shoulder the risk to build it. It has promised a “revised strategy” for the scheme, under which less risk will be handed to the station’s design and build contractor.

The Curzon Street station, which is a 10-minute walk from the Mace-revamped New Street station, will be the catalyst for the revamp of the wider Digbeth area of the city.

Designed by WSP and Grimshaw Architects, the scheme (pictured) was given planning earlier this spring.

A winner on the scheme is due to be announced next year.