Member Article

Balfour Beatty clinches contracts to renew Lancs sea defences

The infrastructure construction group Balfour Beatty has won two contracts totalling £73m, to carry out work on sea defences for Blackpool and Wyre councils.

The £20m Anchorsholme Scheme for Blackpool Council and the £53m Rossall Scheme for Wyre Council will replace 3km of 1930s seawalls as part of promenade renewal and beach management projects.

Balfour Beatty has now worked for Blackpool and Wyre for 13 years.

The firm will use Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology on both schemes at design development stage and throughout construction to create a virtual environment to mitigate risks and manage interfaces prior to starting works on site.

Upon handover of the schemes, Balfour Beattie staff will train teams from both Councils to use BIM for asset management purposes including ongoing operations, maintenance planning and monitoring.

Andrew McNaughton, chief executive of Balfour Beatty, said: “Drawing on our extensive experience of delivering coastal defence schemes, we will utilise innovative construction methods such as BIM to deliver first class civil engineering schemes that will protect over 12,000 properties and local infrastructure from the risk of coastal flooding.”

Work on both contracts will start on site later this year with completion for Anchorsholme in summer 2015 and for Rossall in summer 2017.

Both schemes will be predominantly funded by the Environment Agency. They form part of the wider Fylde Peninsula Coastal Programme which aims to protect properties from flooding and regenerate parkland areas for local community use.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .