Quintain lines up builders for Wembley PRS push

Developer Quintain is lining up contractors for starts on several projects at its Wembley Park scheme, after announcing plans to accelerate construction on the 85-acre North-west London development last month.

Quintain wants to have 3,000 private rental sector (PRS) units on site by the end of the year, after its US owner - investor Lone Star, which bought the developer 18 months ago - identified the sub-sector as the best way to maximise value from the project.

Building can reveal contractors Carillion and Wates are vying to build the second phase of one project comprising 420 rental units across three buildings to the South-west of the site behind Wembley Stadium.

Meanwhile, McLaren has signed a pre-construction deal on 360 PRS units designed by the project’s masterplanner Flanagan Lawrence to the west of the iconic stadium, which are due to complete in summer 2019.

To the east of the site, John Sisk & Son has also picked up a pre-construction agreement for 740 apartments. The units will be built on top of the new Wembley Stadium coach park and are scheduled to complete by the middle of 2020.

As previously reported, Wates is heading for completion on 120 units and has begun work on another two buildings housing a further 280 PRS units.

These firms are all on Quintain’s four-strong roster of main contractors. However, other builders including McAleer & Rushe - which is building the first phase of a South-west site comprising 190 PRS units in one building - are also working on the scheme.

Matt Voyce, construction director at Quintain, told Building the developer was committed to upping the pace of construction at Wembley Park: “There’s always been a project on site, but it’s tended to be one project at a time and that in itself is challenging because of the scale of the plots, but we’re now taking it to a different level.”

Voyce said he was open to working with new contractors: “The framework was put in place to guarantee capacity in an overheating market and engender collaboration and innovation.

“We felt that having a nucleus of contractors would allow that to come to the fore, but it isn’t a closed shop and we are talking to other contractors and we have others on site.”

The commercial element at Wembley has also now gone out to the market for interest and Voyce said it could likely go to a contractor outside of those on its framework. Meanwhile, Quintain expects to start excavation for two more PRS buildings which hug Wembley Stadium’s concourse this summer and plans to tender the main contractor role in the third quarter of this year.

Quintain anticipates the scheme’s peak will be the middle of next year when it expects to have 3,700 workers on site with 500-600 vehicles delivering a day. The plan is to fully complete Wembley Park in 2024 with the 3,000 PRS units completed by 2020. Currently there are 1,000 workers on site.

Voyce added: “What we can’t allow is any slippage on delivery because we have to be quite cogniscent of absorption. We’ve got a lot of units coming across and the challenge my Tipi [Quintain’s build to rent business that will manage the PRS units] colleagues are going to have is letting them all so we’ve got to give them the best opportunity.”

Quintain has already invested £900m in the transformation of the site around Wembley Stadium since its acquisition of Wembley (London) Ltd in 2002.

In November last year the firm secured £800m of new funding for the next five years, a year after the company’s £745m takeover by US investor Lone Star.