The University of Birmingham are set to ease up on contractors as competition increases in the West Midlands. Speaking at our conference Trevor Payne, Director of Estates at the University of Birmingham admitted that the higher education institution faced growing competition to attract contractors to deliver its campus development.

He said: ‘’We are competing with HS2. There is a limited pool of contractors so we must be easy to work with and we need to be different about how we approach the market.’’

In June the University’s new Teaching and Learning Building is due to start, whilst the university’s council will also consider the business case for a project at 3 Centenary Square. The development, to be housed on the site of Birmingham’s former municipal bank, will be turned into a publicly accessible city centre hub for the institution.

John Plumridge, Director of Estates the Birmingham City University, said the higher education institution are looking to set up a formal joint venture to create space for commercial spin offs of its academic activities, adding that they ‘don’t have a huge supply of commercial spin out space currently’.

Microsoft are just one of several tech companies to have expressed a desire to take space in the 11,000 sq m STEAMHouse, which his organisation is carving out of the former Typhoo tea factory. The STEAMHouse and a new school of computing were just two of the key projects in the first phase of the University’s expansion in the area with both benefitting from their proximity to Birmingham’s HS2 station which will also be in the regeneration zone.

Birmingham City University also aim to capitalise on its landholdings in the area, some of which HS2 is currently acquiring under a compulsory purchase order to build the new station, by developing a JV with the rail company. The Uni is exploring options for land underneath the new viaduct which will cut across east Birmingham to deliver the last leg to the new station. He said: ‘’This is a massive part of international infrastructure and we’re right at the heart of it.’’

On the opposite side of the city the university is involved in a pre-application discussion for a 600 bed student accommodation project. The university is seeking a funding partner for the scheme, which it is bringing forward with major landowner Calthorpe Estate.

Alongside the student development they also plan to bring 12,000 sq m of health-related space in its city south scheme. Responding to a question from the audience he said the university had a track record of prioritising quality over price when selecting contractors saying: ‘’If they are not professional enough to price the job they are not worth bothering with. A couple of companies are fundamentally unstable because they have lost focus on quality.’’

Stella Manzie CBE, Interim Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council, said the city’s five higher education institutions had seen a ‘phenomenal increase’ in applications from 61,820 in 2007 to almost 110,000 in 2016.