Balfour, Costain, O'Rourke among 7 chasing £60m Heathrow road

Seven firms are preparing to price a £50m-£60m project to build a new airside access road at Heathrow Airport.

Balfour Beatty, Costain, Ferrovial, Laing O'Rourke, Morgan Est, Skanska and Vinci are all thought to have received documents for the scheme this week.

The firms will compete for the work to build the Eastern Apron Airside Road (EAAR) under BAA's Complex Build Integrator framework. The list will then be whittled down to six.

Work will involve the construction of a grade-separated airside road to provide access to the new T2B terminal and T2C remote stands, which are part of the £1.5bn Heathrow East project.

The road will start from the south-east corner of the main terminal, cross over the London Underground Piccadilly tunnels, go under the Kilo taxiway, reappear at T2B, and then under the Lima taxiway, rising at the T2C remote stands.

The work is scheduled to be carried out in conjunction with the redevelopment of the southern taxiway.

A source said: "This work basically involves the road which will run through a cut and cover tunnel under the taxiways. About seven or eight firms on the framework will go for it, but that is likely to be cut down to six. It is going to be quite a complicated job with all the M&E services integration involved."

A contract award is due by December this year, with work scheduled to begin in April 2010. Completion is due for Spring 2012.

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