Kier and Tilbury Douglas take £108m schools work

Kier and Tilbury Douglas have secured preconstruction appointments on two Department for Education school schemes with combined values of up to £108m. Kier has been selected for the £77m redevelopment of Stepney All Saints Church of England Secondary School in east London, while Tilbury Douglas has taken the £31m Cavendish School project in Eastbourne.

Neither appointment is yet a final fixed-price main works contract. At Stepney All Saints, Kier has been brought in under a preconstruction services agreement covering early supplier involvement during the two-stage procurement process. Detailed design and final works pricing will continue to develop, with the overall programme currently scheduled to run until July 2031.

The Stepney project involves design, new construction, and refurbishment across an existing 1,500-place secondary school and sixth form in Tower Hamlets. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete has been identified in several areas of the estate, including the roof of the main building, forcing part of the fourth floor out of use while a permanent solution is developed.

Tilbury Douglas will follow a similar preconstruction route at Cavendish School. The all-through academy on Eldon Road serves pupils aged from two to 16 and has around 1,350 places, with a main school building dating from 1939 and several later extensions. The contractor will develop the design and refurbishment proposals before agreement of the principal design-and-build contract, with the programme currently extending to November 2029.

Two-stage procurement exposes risk before construction

Occupied education estates are difficult to price from outline design information because programme risk is scattered across the existing buildings. Phasing, temporary classrooms, safeguarding, asbestos, utilities, access, fire arrangements, noise, and the condition of retained structures all influence how much work can happen during term time and what must be concentrated into school holidays.

RAAC adds another constraint at Stepney. The material has already affected parts of the building, and permanent replacement has to be designed around an operational school that still requires teaching space, circulation, emergency access, and secure separation between pupils and construction. Kier’s preconstruction period gives the team time to develop temporary works, logistics, demolition, replacement structures, and package interfaces before the main contract price is settled.

Cavendish presents a different existing-building problem. An estate based around a 1939 structure and successive additions is likely to contain variations in construction, services, condition, and performance that cannot be resolved from a single set of drawings. Intrusive surveys and design development are therefore central to deciding which parts can be retained and where replacement represents the more reliable whole-life option.

The Department for Education’s Construction Framework 2025 provides for two-stage design-and-build procurement at the high-value end of the programme. Both Kier and Tilbury Douglas appear among the appointed framework contractors, giving the department a structured route to involve contractors during design rather than waiting until every project risk has been translated into tender documents.

That approach does not remove commercial uncertainty. The headline £77m and £31m values describe the expected scale of the schemes rather than guaranteed final contract sums, and design development, surveys, market testing, and risk allocation can change both scope and price before the second stage is agreed. The preconstruction period is therefore most useful where it turns poorly defined risk into information that can actually be priced.

School projects also place unusual constraints on logistics. Deliveries and heavy plant movements have to be separated from pupil arrival and departure times, compounds can consume scarce external space, and temporary accommodation may itself require utilities, fire routes, foundations, and access works before the main project starts. Construction sequencing has to be designed around education rather than expecting the school to adapt around the contractor.

The length of the two programmes reflects those constraints. Stepney is currently scheduled through to July 2031 and Cavendish to November 2029, periods that extend far beyond a conventional summer refurbishment. Both projects will need phased construction and carefully managed handovers if teaching is to continue throughout most of the programme.

The Department for Education launched its current construction framework as a mechanism for school and other publicly funded building work, with high-value projects able to use two-stage routes and early contractor involvement. The contractor list confirms both Kier and Tilbury Douglas among the framework members.

For the two newly appointed contractors, the immediate job is consequently not to pour concrete but to make the eventual construction packages more predictable. Surveys, design coordination, supplier input, logistics planning, and temporary arrangements will determine how much uncertainty remains when the main works are priced. On live school estates, resolving those questions before mobilisation is considerably less disruptive than discovering them with pupils on one side of the hoarding and a programme already running on the other.