Top consultants land advisory roles on schools programme

Turner & Townsend, EC Harris and Mott MacDonald have landed key advisory roles on the government’s £2bn Priority School Building Programme, Building understands.

The three consultants will act as technical advisors on the programme, which was announced this summer as a replacement for the scrapped £55bn Building Schools for the Future initiative. The Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP) aims to rebuild or substantially refurbish between 100 and 300 schools over the course of its lifetime.

The firms will assist delivery body Partnerships for Schools in establishing which schools should be included in the programme, and to provide consultancy services on the first group of schools to go forward. They will also provide services including project management, cost consultancy and initial design advice.

The government is expected to announce which schools will be included in the programme within the next month. The value of the contract to the consultants will be dependent on how many schools are in the first wave. It is understood that Partnerships for Schools will look to procure further consultants for later stages of the programme.