Balfour Beatty secures £52 million Early Environment Works HS2 contract

Balfour Beatty today announces that it has been awarded a £52 million contract on behalf of HS2, to deliver environmental works across the route from West Midlands to Crewe. The contract has been awarded through the SCAPE Framework, to which the company was appointed as sole contractor in 2018.As part of the contract, Balfour Beatty will create a number of new environmental habitats along the 64-kilometre section of Europe’s largest infrastructure project, including woodland and wetlands.In addition, the company will plant thousands of trees covering the equivalent of 86 football pitches; more than 18 miles of new hedge rows; and enough grassland meadows to cover 140 football pitches, to encourage wildflowers and insects to flourish.Having launched its sustainability strategy, Building New Futures, last year, this latest contract award supports Balfour Beatty’s bold and ambitious targets of going beyond net zero and positively impacting more than one million people by 2040. The award follows Royal Assent in February 2021 for the latest 36-mile section of the railway, which will open with HS2’s first section to provide seamless low carbon high speed services between Crewe, West Midlands and London and link to the mainline for direct services northwards.Early works are already underway with completion scheduled in Spring 2023. At peak construction, the project will employ a workforce of over 200 people as well as a number of graduate and apprenticeship positions.