Firm wins £5.5m deal for Heathrow Airport

Building services firm NG Bailey has secured an order worth 5.5m from Carillion, to provide 12 nodes for BAA's Heathrow Terminal Five Concourse C. The nodes are buildings that connect the airport's departure lounges to the aircrafts. They will be used by passengers boarding aircraft such as the new Airbus A380.

When completed, they will allow more than 500 passengers to enter through three aircraft doors.

It's the latest project being carried out by the NG Bailey Off-Site division, which is also poised to win more work in the health and prisons sectors. The components are all manufactured at the company's base in Bradford before being delivered to Heathrow and installed within a week.

Lee Horton, the general manager of NG Bailey Off-site, which has 60 staff, said: "We've been working with Carillion on Heathrow for about two years. It's a new concourse that will allow more planes to land and take off and gives Heathrow a bit more capacity. We were working down there (Heathrow) on a range of building services, such as corridor modules. As the work was going so well, they asked us almost a year ago whether we delivered nodes. The main concourse is being built traditionally, while the nodes that link the concourse to the aircraft are all being done in Bradford. We've probably created up to 10 jobs while production was at its height."

Mr Horton believes that off-site manufacturing can be cheaper and more efficient than conventional methods. For example, work wasn't disrupted by January's heavy snowfalls.

He added: "In terms of quality, you've got a controlled environment so you're not at the whims of the weather. You're not working in multiple workplaces.

"The environment on-site can lead to unproductivity. For example, if you're working on a 10-storey office block, and you're going to take a quarter of an hour lunch break, it may take you a quarter of an hour to get to the canteen. Here it's all in one place, so it's easier to have a higher level of productivity.

"We're working with the prison service. That's an exciting project... It's high security so the walls have to be thick concrete. It means there's less and less space to erect the bits that bring the building to life."

NG Bailey, which is Britain's largest building services provider, was recently appointed by BAM Construction to deliver all mechanical, electrical and information communication technology services for Great Ormond Street Hospital's new clinical building. The contract, which is worth 37.5m, will include a vital contribution from Bailey Off-Site. The off-site division will manufacture 110 prefabricated corridor modules.

Tim Cunningham, operations director for NG Bailey in London, said: "This is a substantial project and is one of the largest healthcare projects we've contracted in London. Great Ormond Street Hospital is a world renowned institution and we are proud to have the job on our books."

NG Bailey is due to complete the project in November 2011.

NG BAILEY: THE FACTS AND FIGURES

Ilkley-based NG Bailey is one of Yorkshire's biggest privately owned companies.

It employs 3,500 people and has a turnover in the region of 600m.

NG Bailey, which started in a tiny Leeds basement, is one of the largest mechanical and electrical and building services companies in Europe.

Over the last decade, it has worked on the Welsh Millennium Centre, the Bluewater Shopping Complex, in Kent, and the restoration of the Great Hall at Stirling Castle.

The company is working with VINCI Construction UK to deliver the mechanical and electrical and information communication technology services, for Network Rail's redevelopment of King's Cross Station in London.

More than 47 million people use the station every year, and this number is expected to rise by a further 10 million within a decade. Over the next four years, King's Cross will be transformed into a world- class transport hub.