Council invites bids for £330m Our Town Hall project

The hunt for a management contractor for the £330m overhaul of Manchester’s grade one-listed town hall has started, ahead of a launch event for the project on 28 February.

The council has issued tender documents to appoint a single management contractor to the project, in a deal worth between £150m and £190m.

The successful contractor will be responsible for overseeing works packages on the project, some of which could be worth up to £40m. The council said there could be more than 100 individual works packages to procure for the project, with a typical range of between £100,000 and £10m.

Works will take place over a four-year period, with the management contractor’s deal expected to run for 53 months to incorporate handover and aftercare periods.

It is expected that the council will whittle down bidders to a shortlist of five, and will choose a winning contractor later in the year. Tenders will have a weighting of 20% towards social value, 10% on price, and the remainder on quality.

A launch event for the project will be held at the Town Hall on 28 February.

Deputy leader of the council, Cllr Bernard Priest, said: “We want to make sure that local firms know all about the huge range of opportunities to work with us on the Our Town Hall project.

“Everything from repairing lead windows to scaffolding to electrical work is needed and we’re keen to appoint the best possible companies to our team, to carry out all of the diverse and sometimes specialist elements involved.

“This incredibly important, once-in-a-lifetime project has the potential to really benefit the Manchester economy and through events such as this, we will ensure that as many locally-based firms as possible have the chance to be part of it.”

The target date to have the building fully refurbished and occupied is 2024. The main town hall has already been vacated, with most council services relocating to the town hall extension, although some have moved elsewhere in the city, including the coroner’s court, which will move to the Royal Exchange later this year.

The team already in place on the wider project, which is expected to take six years at a cost of £330m, includes Mace as project manager; Ramboll as structural engineer; Purcell as architect; Planit IE as landscape architect; building services engineer Arup; and Faithful + Gould as quantity surveyor.

Designs are currently at RIBA stage two, with the project team’s co-located office already up and running.

Manchester City Council also appointed Paul Candelent, formerly regional director for the North and Midlands at Capita, as its project director for the scheme in March last year.

Businesses looking to attend the launch event on 28 February can register their interest here.