...as QSs queue up for Midland jobs

Capita Symonds’ parent company Capita Group is looking for a mid-sized acquisition target in the city.

Capita Symonds, which offers design, engineering, planning and surveying services, is understood to be down to the final two in a tender to provide IT outsourcing services to Birmingham City Council. The firm has offices in Birmingham at Hagley Road and Quadrant Court, Calthorpe Road.

Cyril Sweett is meanwhile looking to take on another 200 staff in Birmingham in the next three years. Ian Pocock, regional director of cost consultancy at the firm, said a key source of new work would be the Building Schools for the Future initiative. “A lot of contractors are asking us to help them bid for BSF projects,” he said.

A number of large projects on the drawing board in Birmingham, such as the redevelopment of New Street station, which Pocock said would have a “T-5 style impact” on the local construction economy.

Erinaceous Group, the Croydon-based property services firm, made a similar bid to get a firmer foothold in the Midlands earlier this year when it bought one of Birmingham’s long-standing QS firms, Francis Graves. Erinaceous bought Entente Consulting, which owns Graves and consultancy Naismith, for £7m in July.

Lucy Cummings, commercial director at Erinaceous, told QS News at the time: “Our rationale for the acquisition is twofold: we gain a complimentary set of services in project management and quantity surveying and we extend into the Midlands, where until now we have had no customer base at all.”