Lend Lease wins £25m university building deal

Lend Lease, the property and infrastructure group, is to build a £25 million replacement site for the Rowett Institute at the University of Aberdeen.

The building will replace the existing Rowett facility which has carried out research into nutrition and health since before the First World War.

Work is due to start next month with completion due in November 2014.

The institute is on the University of Aberdeen health campus at Foresterhill, and the site will include a purpose-built human nutrition unit which will be the most advanced facility of its kind in the UK.

The design team for the work will be led by the Aberdeen office of Halliday Fraser Munro Architects, which is already working with Lend Lease on the replacement Mearns Academy for Aberdeenshire Council.

The Rowett project is similar in size and scale to the New Bute School of Medicine at the University of St Andrews which Lend Lease completed in 2010.

Gordon Anderson, Lend Lease’s executive general manager, said: “Being named preferred main contractor for the Rowett Institute is a great result for us. This project was identified in our business plan as a key win, further cementing our presence in the North East of Scotland.”

Lend Lease has also been appointed to Aberdeenshire Council’s capital works framework and is working on The Hydro arena in Glasgow and a technology and innovation centre at the University of Strathclyde.