Willmott Dixon has completed Greenheys, a £60 million, 131,000 sq ft Containment Level 2 laboratory building at Manchester Science Park for developer Bruntwood SciTech, handed over on time and on budget as the new national headquarters of UK Biobank, a project that shows contractors and architects increasingly competing on specialist life-sciences delivery capability rather than general commercial fit-out experience. Consideration was disclosed at £60 million for the build, rising to £75 million including UK Biobank's fit-out.

Willmott Dixon is a UK-wide construction and development contractor delivering commercial, residential, education and life sciences projects across England, Scotland and Wales.

Bruntwood SciTech is a Manchester-headquartered joint venture between Bruntwood, Legal & General and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, describing itself as the UK's largest property platform dedicated to the science and technology sector.

UK Biobank will relocate 11 million biological samples and half of its 400-strong team to Greenheys, supported by a £127.6 million UK Research and Innovation infrastructure award.

BDP acted as architect, Deloitte as planning consultant, Walker Sime as cost consultant, DW Consulting on structures and civils, and Silcock Leedham on MEP design.

The structural driver is a persistent UK laboratory space shortage, with vacancy rates for fitted lab space in the Golden Triangle at just 1 per cent, pushing occupiers and developers to look beyond Oxford, Cambridge and London toward regional science parks with room to build at scale.

For the sector, the timing matters because Greenheys is the most technically capable building in its national portfolio, reinforcing Manchester Science Park's position within a campus Manchester City Council values at £3 billion in annual gross value added.

In addition, delivering a CL2 laboratory on time and on budget, with 99 per cent of project spend retained within 40 miles of the site, demonstrates the specialist delivery capability increasingly required to compete for life sciences work beyond conventional commercial fit-out.

The broader implication for the sector is that regional science parks capable of delivering purpose-built, high-specification lab space are becoming credible alternatives to the Golden Triangle, pulling specialist contractors and design teams toward the North West.

Source: Specification Online / Willmott Dixon / Place North West / Drug Discovery World