The appointment of Mace comes less than two months after the collapse of ISG into administration in September.
UCL said that it had a lot of interest from major contractors to take over construction of its neurology centre and all the bids were very strong. Mace, however, impressed on quality and for its recent track record on UCL projects Marshgate at UCL East and the Student Centre.
Over the next three months Mace will carry out a review of the site before the terms of its appointment are finalised, as well as a revised schedule and completion date. UCL and Mace will continue to explore a potential role for incumbent suppliers formerly appointed by ISG during the review and delivery phases.
Alan Thompson, dean of the Faculty of Brain Sciences and project sponsor, said: “I’m very pleased to welcome Mace to the programme. We felt very confident that the team shared our vision to build a world-class research and treatment centre, which will translate discoveries into treatments and have a real impact on patients with disabling neurological conditions. We are all looking forward to working closely with Mace to move forward without delay.
“This extraordinarily complex and ambitious project will play a critical role nationally and internationally in transforming patients’ lives and I’m looking forward to beginning work on the final stage and seeing the project come to fruition.”
Hannah Milner, director of UCL’s Estate Capital Programme, said: “This is a very positive step for the programme and I am delighted to have Mace on board. With their extensive experience in the education and life-sciences sectors, they are ideally positioned to complete our state-of-the-art facility with us. The legacy of this construction project will be the vital research that will be conducted within the completed facility and hence our focus remains on completing to world-class standards.
“We’re all very much looking forward to establishing a collaborative working relationship with Mace and finishing the project together.”
The facility will be home to the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and the UK Dementia Research Institute. It will house up to 1,000 scientists, clinicians and patients. As well as seven floors of shared labs, workspaces, consulting rooms and collaboration spaces for scientists and support teams, the building will host an MRI suite with five scanners, a 220-seat lecture theatre and a range of shared core facilities, equipment and core technology platforms including microscopy, transcriptomics and tissue processing to encourage new ways of working, collaboration and knowledge-exchange.
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