GMI Construction has secured a £17.3 million single-stage design-and-build contract to deliver a new library and business centre for Warwickshire County Council in Nuneaton, a civic-led scheme that shows contractors continuing to take on full design responsibility for town centre regeneration anchors even as private-sector development activity remains subdued. The £17.3 million contract value rises to £20.7 million including VAT; consideration for the design-and-build risk transfer to GMI was not otherwise disclosed.

GMI Construction is a Leeds-headquartered contractor delivering design-and-build and construction management projects across the UK, with a portfolio spanning commercial, industrial, education and residential sectors.

Warwickshire County Council is the scheme's client and the lead authority behind the Transforming Nuneaton regeneration programme, working in partnership with Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council.

GMI was selected through a competitive flexible procedure, seeing off competition from Clegg Construction, McLaren Construction and McPhillips (Wellington), for a scheme on the site of a former Royal Mail delivery office in Church Street.

Mace Consult acted as project manager, contract administrator and cost manager through RIBA Stages 5 to 7.

The structural driver is the maturing of England's town centre regeneration funding model, in which county and borough councils use Local Growth Fund, Towns Fund and Future High Street Fund capital to assemble sites and then transfer full delivery risk to a single design-and-build contractor. Warwickshire's Transforming Nuneaton programme began with an initial £7.5 million Local Enterprise Partnership grant and has since grown into a multi-decade pipeline anchored by this library and business centre.

For GMI, the timing matters because winning against three established regional and national contractors on a competitive flexible procedure reinforces its position in civic design-and-build work, a segment that has held up better than private residential and commercial development through the recent downturn.

For Warwickshire County Council, the award converts a prospectus first floated at MIPIM years ago into a contracted, dated delivery programme, with completion set for December 2027.

The broader implication for the sector is that public-sector anchor buildings, rather than private commercial schemes, are increasingly keeping mid-tier regional contractors' order books full, a pattern likely to persist while private development finance remains constrained.

Source: Construction News / Construction Enquirer / Coventry Telegraph / warwickshire.gov.uk