Balfour Beatty surfaces as winner of contract to double size of Rolls-Royce submarine facility

The work comes off the back of last year announcement of the AUKUS pact, a trilateral security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In March this year it was confirmed that Australia has committed £2.4 billion over ten years to the UK SSN-AUKUS programme, which includes a contribution to upgrading Rolls-Royce Submarines infrastructure,.

Balfour Beatty will build new manufacturing and office facilities as well as the adjoining site infrastructure to accommodate an additional 1,170 skilled roles at Rolls-Royce, across disciplines including manufacturing and engineering.

Leo Quinn, Balfour Beatty’s group chief executive, said, “Today’s announcement marks an important step forward in ensuring Rolls-Royce has the infrastructure in place to support the strategic requirements of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the AUKUS programmes.

“I’m delighted Balfour Beatty has been chosen to support this critical work for a project that will see us unite our unique multi-disciplinary expertise and experience in delivering large scale complex projects within live, operational nuclear environments.”

Rolls-Royce Submarines infrastructure director Terry Meighan said: “We cannot deliver against our commitments to the MOD and the AUKUS programme on our own. It will require a strong and reliable supply chain bringing their expertise to enhance and enable the critical work we do. The selection of Balfour Beatty as our expansion construction partner is a prime example of that.

“Their experience in delivering major infrastructure, as well as their long history of complex project delivery in secure environments, were important factors in our decision. This is an exciting milestone as we grow our site and our business to meet the enhanced demand for our expertise.”

Consultancy WSP will act as Balfour Beatty’s non-fissile design partner. The size of the contract has not been disclosed but work is expected to take a decade to complete.

Rolls-Royce is currently supporting the existing Astute and Dreadnought boat build programmes through the delivery of reactor plant and associated components.

It also provides support across the world for reactor plant equipment from its Operations Centre in Derby and supports the submarines when in the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard and the naval bases at Devonport and Faslane.