Kier has won a \u00a3117.7m deal to work at an army site in Suffolk.<\/p>\n
The tier one contractor will deliver infrastructure design-and-build work at Rock Barracks near Woodbridge.<\/p>\n
The contract, which runs until April 2030, was awarded by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) last week as a framework call-off.<\/p>\n
It will see Kier<\/a> deliver living accommodation, technical facilities and other infrastructure, and will include a combination of new-build and refurbishment of existing assets.<\/p>\n In addition to improving living, working and training environments for service personnel, the project will support cohesion and operational effectiveness by enabling the colocation of three units.<\/p>\n An incumbent unit, 23 Parachute Engineer Regiment, will be joined at Rock Barracks by 28 Counter-Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Engineer Regiment and 70 Gurkha Parachute Squadron.<\/p>\n Following design and development work, construction is scheduled to start on site in late 2027 and complete in spring 2030.<\/p>\n The job forms part of the \u00a35bn Defence Estate Optimisation (DEO) initiative, which seeks to deliver the housing, offices and specialist facilities required by the military for the future.<\/p>\n Construction News\u00a0<\/em>approached Kier for more information on the project.<\/p>\n The contractor is working with Galliford Try<\/a>, Graham, Laing O\u2019Rourke<\/a>, Lendlease<\/a> and Morgan Sindall<\/a> on an alliance to deliver the DEO programme<\/a>.<\/p>\n The DEO programme began in 2016. One of its first completed projects was a Kier-built headquarters for the Defence Infrastructure Organisation at Whittington in Staffordshire, which opened in 2021.<\/p>\n Figures from the National Audit Office showed that the MoD spent approximately 12 per cent of its annual resources on its estate, amounting to around \u00a35bn a year in 2023\/24.<\/p>\n The watchdog added: \u201cThe MoD has acknowledged that the scale, nature and location of the estate needs to be better aligned to current and future armed forces\u2019 size and composition. It also recognises that much of its built estate is old, of poor quality, and expensive to run.\u201d<\/p>\n