Timber frame to be 'mainstay' of £300m Commonwealth Village

House builders CCG, Cruden and Mactaggart & Mickel are each set to build around a third of nearly 1,500 homes for the £300m Commonwealth Games Village in Glasgow.

Meanwhile CJ understands that timber frame is expected to be the 'mainstay' of the development.

The three firms are part of the City Legacy consortium, which was named preferred bidder for the project last week. City Legacy will be responsible for building 700 riverside homes before the games, and another 765 after it, in the Dalmarnock area in the East End of Glasgow.

The consortium also includes: WH Malcolm; Davis Langdon; architects RMJM; engineers WSP Group; Scottish & Southern Energy; and JLL, which will provide property development advice.

Ed Monaghan, managing director of Mactaggart & Mickel, said WH Malcolm is expected to work on ground remediation and infrastrucure for the homes, and is likely to start on site towards the end of the year, while building works will commence around July 2010.

Monaghan said: "Both MacTaggart and Mickel and CCG have their own timber frame facility, so we would be hoping to use those systems and shorten the timetable for the development.

"There will be subcontract packages that will be put out to the market of various sizes and scales. But we don't have the detail at the moment - it will take a bit of thinking through."

The first 700 homes, which will be made up of three core housing types, will house 8,000 athletes during the Games, before 300 are put up for sale, 300 are used for social housing, and 100 for mid-market rent.

They will be 'refreshed' after the Games in July 2014, as well as being retrofitted with kitchens, which are not provided for the athletes. They will be ready for the first occupants to move in in September/October of the same year.

A planning application for the development is now expected to be submitted at the start of 2010.

The losing bidders were the PPD Consortium (including Mace), the Gladedale consortium (with Bellway Homes), and the Broadway Malyan consortium (with Arup).