Quorum provides work for 1,000 local builders

Jun 5 2009 by Chris Knox, The Journal

THE development of England’s biggest speculative office development Quorum Business Park in Newcastle is supporting the region’s ailing construction industry by providing much-needed work for more than 1,000 of the region’s builders.

Since groundwork started last year, the development has handed out contracts to 46 companies and provided work for 1,186 builders, who have clocked up more than 163,000 hours in areas of construction, plastering, landscaping, roofing, cladding, electrics and plumbing.

Many of the contractors are local businesses, with the site also drawing on the resources of local suppliers in order to help boost the regional economy.

Despite the current economic climate, more than £180m is being invested into Quorum, making it England’s biggest office development project, with eight new high-quality buildings – totaling 450,000sq ft – out of the ground in the next three years.

In addition to the offices, the site, which is due for completion by 2012, is also to include landscaped gardens, a hotel, a restaurant, a retail parade together with tennis courts, and five-a-side football pitch and boules courts.

Quorum’s project manager Jonathan Ryder said: “Procuring local sub-contractors is very high on our agenda. People forget we have a highly-skilled construction workforce on our doorstep, so lots of the firms that are busy on our site right now are small, North East businesses.

“Buying local can bring added advantages that are not always cost-based. For example, we have 500 trees being planted on site and chose Brambledown Landscaping from Brandon Village, County Durham, to do the job.

“They weren’t the cheapest, but we chose them because their locality meant they could handle the routine maintenance programme more effectively. That’s a £500,000 contract we deliberately gave to a local company because it’s offering was the best suited to the park’s success.”

Other North East business working on Quorum include County Durham-based roofers Alderclad, Seaton Delavel’s Ivanhoe Forge, Abel Plastering of Killingworth, IPCL Fireproofing from North Shields and TCR painters and joiners from Team Valley, Gateshead.

Another firm to benefit from the development is Ivanhoe Forge in Seaton Sluice, which is currently fitting a number of steel staircases and handrails and steel staircases in several of the buildings.

Ivanhoe managing director Phil Turner said: “This development has been a great help to our company. It is long-term contracts like this which help us to trade in the recession with some confidence. As more buildings start to appear, we would be looking to landing further work at the site.”

As more buildings start to appear, we would be looking to landing further work at the site