A decade of UK ‘infrastructure growth’ has been predicted by Balfour Beatty CEO and Aston University visiting professor, Leo Quinn, as the construction industry gets ready for a potential boom following financial commitments from the Government.
£4.8 billion has been promised for infrastructure investment in towns across the country and £26 billion for public capital investment to hit emissions targets as part of the Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda to raise living standards in regions outside of London.
Leo Quinn said:
“If you start to look at infrastructure and you look at either HS2, you look at nuclear - in terms of defence nuclear or civil nuclear - you look at the green agenda . . . we are entering into an era of 10 years of infrastructure growth.
“I think the future looks very optimistic.”
Balfour Beatty, the UK’s largest construction group, is working on a number of projects, including Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear power station built in the UK in more than 20 years, and HS2, the high-speed rail link between London and the north of England.
Overall, the UK group and French construction company Vinci have secured about £6 billion in HS2 projects as part of a joint venture.
This includes a £5 billion civil engineering contract for the stretch of HS2 between Warwickshire and Staffordshire and a £1 billion construction management deal for Old Oak Common station in north London, alongside engineering group Systra.
The group was also awarded a £52 million contract to deliver ‘environmental works’ across the HS2 route from the West Midlands to Crewe, creating new habitats along this 64km section of track.
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