Essex firms reap £120 million as construction giant turns 150

Essex firms reap £120 million as construction giant turns 150

Hemel Hempstead, 2 September 2019 - Firms in Essex have secured orders worth £120 million over the past 20 years – all through one construction firm.

BAM Construction, part of the worldwide Royal BAM Group, which is 150 years old this year, tracked the orders in the 20 years since 1999. But the firm’s work in the county of Essex actually dates back to 1879! The company was established just 10 years before that, making it one of the UK’s oldest construction firms.

Adam Harding, BAM Construction’s regional director for the South East, said: ‘This year we completed a multi-storey car park for Stansted Airport, and it made us reflect about what other schemes we might have delivered across Essex. We had to re-discover lost archives and it took us months to do it. [See full list below.] We found over 30 schemes dating back to when we built the War Office in Waltham Abbey for the Government in 1879, exactly 140 years ago. That job was priced at £12,400. Today, that’s something like £2 million. It isn’t just the money that’s changed of course. Our business is unrecognisable now – we are cleaner, safer, and highly technological.’

“When we began, our materials moved around by horse and cart. Now we have drone pilots and virtual reality engineers. But construction has always been about people – collaborative relationships between designers, engineers, clients and sub-contractors. And that’s one reason we value the firms with whom we have placed those orders. Our supply chain in Essex has exported its skills across the UK. We score them on every aspect of what they do from quality and sustainability through to their attitude. And we pick the best – because it is how well you work with others that makes the critical difference.’

Apart from the War Office, BAM’s track record includes two major bypass roads, shopping centres in Harlow, factories for BOC, and neuroscience research buildings for Merck, Sharp and Dohme – one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

The company also created the Sklan factory in Harold Hill, which made heirloom furniture including miniatures. Adam and his team found a fascinating archive video clip of this happening (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atlSVs7xJmk) on YouTube made by British Pathe. The construction of the factory cost £120,000 in 1954 – which would be comfortably over £3.5 million today.

More recently, BAM created the Essex Cardiothoracic Centre and the (then) new HQ for former financial giant Access, both in Basildon. Just a few years ago it handed over Harlow University Technical College (UTC), having built more UTC buildings than any other contractor in the UK.

‘We’ve managed to build just about everything in Essex’, adds Adam Harding, ‘- education, health, industrial, and leisure facilities, plus several supermarkets for Tesco, Asda and Waitrose. The story of 150 years is that you need to be versatile and adaptable to survive, and know how to do more than just create buildings. You need to improve people’s lives along the way.’

Making his point, Mr Harding revealed that BAM used the Stansted Airport car park scheme to help provide 73 weeks of training, eight apprenticeships and four work placements.

BAM in Essex

Construction firm tops £120 million of orders with firms in Essex. 850 orders.

31 schemes.

  • 1879 Waltham Abbey War Office £12,400 [£1.6 million in today’s money.]
  • 1885 St Charles’ Orphanage, Brentwood £14,714
  • 1946 Loughton Council housing
  • 1947 Newbury Park, Bus forecourt for Passenger Transport authority
  • 1949 Westcliffe-on-Sea – converted Lydford Garage into offices
  • 1950 Debden Estate, built houses, flats and shops in a single development
  • 1954 Harold Hill – Sklan factory and premises
  • 1970 Stanford-le-Hope bypass – 3 miles for Thurrock UDC
  • 1971 Mountnessing bypass – carriageway and bridges on A12
  • 1977 British Oxygen (BOC) Magnets – factory and offices in Rainham
  • 1979 Littlewoods in Harlow / Harvey Centre in Harlow – various shops
  • 1980 The HQ for Access – the Joint Credit Card Company, in Basildon
  • 1981 Chelmsford – insurance company offices for £6.4 million
  • 1982 Merck, Sharp & Dohme – neuroscience research centre, Harlow
  • 1983 Basildon – converted a department store to five shops
  • 1985 Tesco in Romford superstore and demolition
  • 1987 Tesco distribution warehouse in Harlow £4.5 million
  • 1988 Tesco on Gallows Corner in Romford
  • 1991 Tesco in Basildon £9.9 million
  • 1992 Tesco in Chelmsford £9 million
  • 1993 Lakeside Car Park – two MSCPs in Thurrock (£12 million) / Waitrose, Harlow (£6 million)
  • 1996 Safeway, Essex (6.5)
  • 1997 Safeway, Maldon / Asda, Colchester (6.5)
  • 2004 Asda, Basildon
  • 2005 Essex Cardiothoracic Centre, Basildon (£31m) (Basildon & Thurrock Uni)**
  • 2014 Harlow UTC (Sir Charles Kao) (£5.1 million)
  • 2017 Stansted Airport 3,000-space MSCP (£27 million)