ISG has been appointed as main contractor on the construction of a new £281m neurology centre for University College London (UCL).
The new building will serve as a hub for the UK Dementia Research Institute and a new home for the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and will create a shared, open and collaborative environment for over 500 neuroscience researchers.
ISG will focus on design and procurement for the new research facility as part of pre-construction work.
The project is being designed to BIM Level 2 standards using fully collaborative web-based software, and is targeting BREEAM Excellent, with an aspiration for Outstanding.
The project team is being led by consultancy Arcadis, which will provide project management, cost management and specialist support services. An existing design team, novated to ISG, will be led by the architectural firm Hawkins/Brown and includes the engineering consultancies Hoare Lea and Ramboll (the former covering mechanical and electrical design, and latter civil and structural engineering).
Building work is due to start in early 2020, with completion scheduled for late 2023 before the building is occupied in 2024.
The new development is part of Transforming UCL, a £1.25bn, ten-year programme of investment in UCL’s estate. Along with the new neurology centre in King’s Cross, the programme is seeing the creation of new world-class facilities in UCL’s Bloomsbury campus and the construction of UCL East, an entirely new campus in east London, adjacent to the Olympic Park.
Lee Hutchinson, managing director for ISG’s science and health business, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as the main contractor to design and build UCL’s new world-class facility for neurological research, allowing us to showcase our specialist expertise in this sector.
“At ISG we thrive on fostering innovation and collaboration, and we encourage our people to think differently and deliver smarter environments. We’re proud to be working with UCL again to deliver a science and healthcare facility of exceptional quality. A vital space will be created for scientists, researchers and clinicians of this world-renowned institute, to discover new ways to diagnose, treat and ultimately prevent one of the greatest health challenges of our time.”
Kevin Argent, deputy director of UCL Estates & director of estates development, said: “We are pleased to have appointed ISG to work with us to deliver a very special building that sits within our Estates Transformation programme, creating a new research and clinical environment for neurological diseases, where patients, clinicians and academics can come together in a state of the art, collaborative, combined facility for the first time’’.
