4
Irish Post
Building Britain 2019
THE
Exciting Projects in 2019 PÁDRAIG BELTON Reports on Irish Firms At Work in Britain Even with Brexit at work, Irish firms are still seeing the UK as a source of strong opportunities in 2019, both in the near and the medium term. The British housing market, especially outside London and particularly in Manchester and the Midlands, remains buoyant despite Brexit, says Simon Rawlinson from the UK’s Construction Leadership Council. And the HS2 high-speed rail link, with £55.7 billion budgeted
for its first two stages, is also a potential boom for Irish construction companies. While generally speaking, public infrastructure projects, the UK government’s ‘build to rent’ schemes, and housing remain areas in which Irish firms particularly see opportunity, says Stephen Hughes, Enterprise Ireland’s head of construction. A few projects stand out a bit more from the rest. Here are just some of these.
GOOGLE’S SEARCH FOR A NEW HEADQUARTERS
McAleer & Rushe - local students
In King’s Cross, a new £1 billion 11-storey headquarters for Google is rising up, housing 4,000 employees of the search engine, the first wholly owned and designed Google building outside the US. The first steps, involving preparing the site terrain and installing sheet piling, are being taken by Sean O’Driscoll and Donal Gallagher’s Galldris Construction.
Dicey enough work, since the site is next to a live rail, as well as in the middle of a heavily pedestrian area with a busy station that sees 34 million entries and exits a year. Sparks Fly for Cleaner Electricity. The Murphy Group is part of a massive £300 million project to lay underground cables for the National Grid, announced in January. The Hinkley Connection project will be linking the new Hinkley C nuclear power station with homes and businesses, allowing the UK to cut its carbon emissions by using cleaner power. Murphy is cooperating with Balfour Beatty and Siemens in the 57 km-long, 400,000 volt connection, from Nailsea to Portishead in the southwest of England. 10.7 km of this length will be underground, including 8.5 km through the Mendlip Hills Area of Outstanding Beauty. Running the cables underground will reduce the effect on communities and
the landscape.
THE NORTH EAST’S FIRST TRIPLE DECKER JUNCTION At the start of March 2019, and after over one million hours of combined work in over 1,000 days, John Sisk & Son finished work on a now open £75 million triple decker junction - the first ever in the North East UK. Over 80,000 drivers are now using it each day. “It has been a very challenging project, and will substantially reduce congestion in the area,” said James Keogh, senior project manager. In recent years, Sisk has had more construction staff at work in Britain than in Ireland. As well as burying a time capsule in the work site (to be opened in 2118), Sisk organised 27 school visits to the construction area while works were in progress, hosting 6,444 school children.
Rendering of Google's new headquarters by King's Cross - Hayes Davidson