McAlpine coup as firm wins £150m office job being let by Dutch developer Edge

Sir Robert McAlpine has won the third major office job in London being masterminded by Dutch developer Edge, Building understands.

The firm was told last week it had beaten Bovis to the j£150m deal which is being handled by Luxembourg-based client VREF Shaftesbury Avenue, a joint venture between Edge and Mitsubishi Estate.

Architect DSDHA’s scheme, which was approved earlier this year, will modernise a brick-faced office block built in 1982 which is currently vacant above the ground floor.

Mace, which is coming to the end of a £250m scheme to build a 28-storey tower for Edge at London Bridge and over the summer won the £200m Edge Liverpool Street scheme, also looked at the deal but was ruled out in August.

The scheme has undergone a redesign, with a new planning application being submitted in late 2024 six years after a previous set of proposals for former site owner Almacantar were approved by the council but never started.

Almacantar sold the site in 2023 to Edge and Mitsubishi, which embarked on a more sustainability-focused rethink after reviewing how office occupier expectations have changed since the pandemic.

Changes include the addition of a new light-filled atrium, the widening of a pedestrian route through the site and the retention of existing floor slabs to reduce embodied carbon emissions.

A draft construction management plan drawn up by Waterman as part of the new application proposed enabling and demolition works starting on site this month with construction completing in summer 2028.

Edge and Mitsubishi retained much of the previous scheme’s project team, including cost consultant Gardiner & Theobald, civil and structural engineer AKT II, planning consultant Gerald Eve, daylight consultant GIA and transport consultant Waterman. MEP engineer Long & Partners and lift consultant D2E were both replaced by Sweco.

Almacantar had originally considered building a 30-storey tower on the site but opted for a refurbishment of the existing building after concluding a high-rise scheme would have been “inappropriate” for the area.

Bovis, which last week was confirmed for a £237m contract to build new and refurbished schemes across two sites in the East Midlands for the British Army, has picked up several schemes since being rebranded earlier this year, including a £330m job at 60 Gracechurch Street in the City for Sellar and a £60m deal to redevelop a 1920s office building at 43-45 Portman Square in London.