Handing over Great Western Academy tops £150 million Swindon milestone for BAM

Handing over Great Western Academy tops £150 million Swindon milestone for BAM

Swindon, 5 September 2018 - One of Britain’s largest contractors has just reached £150 million of schemes delivered in the town of Swindon. Contractor BAM has handed over the £21 million Great Western Academy for its grand opening in September.

The company is also behind the Deanery CE Academy in Wichelstowe, and is currently helping to develop plans for Kingfisher CE Academy on the Deanery site. These are subject to planning and funding approval. If granted, the circa £7 million scheme would be BAM’s 12th in the town and takes it to the £150 million mark of new buildings created since the new millennium. Most recently, it handed over the highly acclaimed Swindon UTC.

Construction Manager Rob Shipp leads led BAM’s work on the three education schemes. He said: ‘Education is our largest market, but we’ve applied our skills on a diverse range of buildings in Swindon. We invested in and created two of them ourselves through our property company at Lydiard Fields. Our clients here over the years have included ASDA, the Royal Mail, British Telecom and even the RAF. Our most recent completed scheme was the highly acclaimed UTC. The skills we needed to work around an area with a heritage sensibility were considerable.’

Rob Shipp says that Great Western Academy looks impressive. ‘The school does look smart – it is designed by Scott Brownrigg and it is clean and fresh, with great views. It will be a lovely place for young people to learn and develop themselves. It’s been a big success for the Education and Skills Funding Agency and for the school, which has a grand opening planned for September. I think the parents, teachers and the community will really appreciate the new facilities.’

BAM operates UK-wide but has permanent regional offices in Bristol and Cardiff and is very active across the South West. Its approach is to try and use local firms to sub-contract works to, in order to return benefits to the communities where it builds.

Nearby firms BAM has used include Renelec Hennion which does mechanical installations, Severn Carpentry in Gloucester, groundworks contractor Cirtus Construction in Chepstow, and Chippenham’s tarmac surfacing business Thornbury Surfacing.

Further information: Mark Slattery, Press and Media Manager, BAM Construct UK Ltd, 0442 238415.