£200m 'Baby Shard' office block out to tender in summer

Developers of a £200m office block on the same development as the Shard in London will put construction work packages out to tender this summer.

Bernard Ainsworth, the managing director of the developer, said the 600,000ft² building known as London Bridge Place, part of the London Bridge Quarter, will be let as a fixed-price deal.

Keltbray will start work later this spring to tear down the 1970s office block which currently stands in its place.

The firm, which also carried out the demolition work on the nearby Southwark Towers which will be replaced by the 310m-high Shard when it completes in May 2012, is expected to take up to a year to carry out the work. The remaining tenants only moved out last month.

Ainsworth said he has already been speaking to contractors about the work with firms believed to have already been sounded out including Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska and Bovis Lend Lease. The main contractor on the Shard, Mace, is also planning to bid. Another firm spoken to has been French giant Bouygues.

A decision on who will build one of the few office blocks going up in the capital is due at the end of the year.

Competitive edge

More details over the fierce competition for the £50m steel package on the Shard have emerged this week.

It is believed that Severfield-Rowen, now widely tipped to replace Cleveland Bridge for the job, asked Mace to price the scheme after work slowed down elsewhere. And another steel firm, Hollandia, the Dutch firm that finished the steel contract on Wembley Stadium after Cleveland walked off, also wanted to work up a price - but Mace declined.

The pair sent in revised bids last week and a decision on who gets the job will now be made by the end of the month, with Mace having to weigh up whether to stick with the company that has been working on the scheme since last summer or turning to a rival it has more experience of working with.