Wates

Bowmer & Kirkland was the Department for Education’s (DfE) highest paid construction company for the fourth year in a row, Construction News can reveal. Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Derbyshire-headquartered firm was paid £320.8m in the 2024/25 financial year - £57m ahead of the…

Tier one contractor Wates has signed the main works order to deliver a £100m expansion at HMP Onley in Warwickshire – the first scheme in the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ's) Small Secure Houseblocks programme to reach this stage. The project will add 180 category C prison places using three 60-bed…

Plans to build three new prisons as part of a £4.7bn spend will now go ahead after the Treasury signed off on funding, a senior minister has said. On Wednesday, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said the Treasury would fund “in full” plans to build the prisons, in a bid to…

Migrant workers are at an increased risk of exploitation on construction sites, a new report has warned. The probe by Achilles, which deals in supply chain risk, found migrant workers are vulnerable to unexplained deductions from wages, restricted access to mobile phones and “informal or unclear” employment arrangements. Based on…

Tier one contractor Wates posted record annual turnover last year although its statutory pre-tax profit nosedived, its latest accounts show. The firm – ranked 7th in last year’s CN100 index of top UK contractors – saw its revenue (excluding joint ventures) rise by 9.2 per cent from £2.1bn to £2.3bn…

Wates has been given the job of repairing Parliament’s crumbling Victora Tower after the competitive tender process for the job failed for a second time. Construction News revealed in April 2024 that the tender for the then-£95m job had to be re-run after errors were made in documents used in the…

A Wates joint venture (JV) has rejigged its approach to kickstarting a 1,380-home estate regeneration project in Essex after fire safety rules delayed progress on plans for tall buildings. The contractor-developer, along with its JV partner Havering Council, is currently redesigning high-rise buildings on the Waterloo Estate regeneration project in…

A major green energy contract helped propel Bouygues to the top of the monthly contractor league table for January. The contractor bagged a £170m job to develop Immingham Green Energy Terminal (IGET) in the Humber Estuary. This and two other projects took Bouygues to the summit in January, with a…

A family member of one of the industry’s biggest construction firms has accused the government of ignoring warnings over the impact of inheritance tax changes. Wates board member James Wates, who also chairs advocacy group Family Business UK (FBUK), said it lobbied HM Treasury on keeping Business Property Relief (BPR)…

The first full working week of 2025 has seen a flurry of job changes across the construction industry. Infrastructure specialist Costain announced the appointment of Eva Soto Pérez as its new engineering services general manager. Pérez moves from Morgan Sindall, where she was engineering director from June 2022. Her CV…