A joint venture between two of the North’s largest construction companies - Graham and the Lagan Group - has helped them win a £100 million contract to develop a major new offshore wind turbine assembly and export facility in the UK.
The Graham Lagan Construction Group Joint Venture (JV) has been awarded the contract to carry out construction at the Green Port Hull site on Alexandra Dock in Hull by Associated British Ports (ABP).
The global engineering company Siemens announced earlier this year that it planned to develop wind turbine production and installation facilities at at two locations in the Hull area, the Green Port Hull in Alexandra Dock and a rotor blade manufacturing facility located at nearby Paull, to the east of Saltend.
Siemens is investing £160 million across the two locations and ABP is investing a further £150 million in the Green Port Hull development.
It is expected that the investment boost for the area could directly create 1,000 jobs and a significant number of construction jobs.
The new facility at Green Port Hull is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2017.
Paul Scott, project director, Graham Lagan Construction Group JV, said the new contract represented a “major opportunity” for both companies.
The North’s Construction Employers Federation (CEF) believes joint ventures between firms are becoming an increasingly popular way for local construction companies to recover ground from the economic collapse.
Last month the federation said statistics showed that construction activity in Northern Ireland had hit a new low.
John Armstrong, managing director of the CEF said that Northern Ireland companies had suffered the worst construction downturn in generations and a recovery had simply not materialised.
“Without the remarkable success of our local companies in winning work in Britain, the Northern Irish construction industry would still be stuck in the doldrums. We estimate that the top 20 local construction companies turnover approximately £1.5 billion of which £1 billion is now generated outside Northern Ireland,” Mr Armstrong added.
