Uni prepares to start £200m engineering campus

The next major project in Manchester University's ongoing estate renewal programme will be a £200m engineering campus.

The university this week published the invitation for contractors to tender for the construction. Work is expected to start on the design-and-build contract in June 2013 with completion in 2018.

The development is pivotal to the university's aim of having a single teaching campus south of the Mancunian Way. Currently several schools are still based in former Umist buildings in Sackville Street north of the ring road.

The Sackville Street assets are likely to eventually be converted to student accommodation but will not be vacated until the new engineering campus is completed in 2018.

Manchester University has spent £750m since 2004 completing ten new buildings and large refurbishments.

The first phase of the plan for the next 10 years will cost £700m and be delivered over six years. It includes the new engineering campus, centres for the School of Law and Manchester Business School, a major refurbishment of the University Library, a new-look Students' Union and new Medical School in Dover Street.

The second phase is expected to cost £300m and begin in 2018, end in 2022. This second phase would create a biomedical campus around the existing Stopford Building, a new health centre for staff and students, and refurbishments in the Schools of Computer Science, Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, Mathematics and Chemistry.

The tender process for the engineering campus is being run through the In-Tend system and deadline for expressions of interest is 15 March.