Kajima's HSE scheme falls six months behind schedule

Contractor Kajima is about six months behind schedule on the £57m PFI Health and Safety Executive headquarters in Bootle, Merseyside. The Japanese firm is understood to have lost about £10m on the project.

The Cartwright Pickard-designed building was originally supposed to have been handed over last spring but a spokesperson for the HSE this week confirmed that staff had only begun a phased move last month.

A spokesperson for Kajima would not discuss the losses, saying that it was a "commercially sensitive matter". It is unclear what caused the problems.

Kajima was appointed main contractor on the 30,000 m2 building, which was designed to house 1500 staff, in March 2003. In June last year, reinforced concrete specialist RCG went into administration after it ran into problems on three schemes, including the HSE project.

Neil Sargeant, the director in charge of the HSE project, left Kajima before Christmas, and the company is understood to have lost numerous commercial staff in the past six months.

Last month Building revealed that Kajima left a Countryside Properties housing project in Cambridge after the completion of the first phase (13 January, page 10). It is understood that Kajima left after it failed to complete the first phase of the 380-unit scheme on time.

Kajima, which has a handful of active projects left in the UK, made an £80m loss on UK PFI projects in the financial year to 31 March 2005. It is expected to face further losses this year when its results are announced in May.

The company had yet another setback in October when Arup told residents at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Caspar housing block, built by Kajima in Leeds, that their homes could collapse in severe weather.

The Kajima spokesperson denied that the head of the UK business, David Evans, had taken on an advisory role on Kajima projects outside the UK.

Last year, Kajima UK had a turnover of about £100m, although its Japanese parent had sales in excess of £5.8bn.