UK Money News
Major rail win for BAM signals Dutch infrastructure turnaround
Fri, 16th Oct 2015 10:14
AMSTERDAM, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Dutch contractor BAM Group said on Friday it had won a 170 million pound ($262.7 million) contract to upgrade a major passenger route in Scotland, in a further sign of the improving fortunes of the troubled Dutch construction sector.
The deal, funded by the Scottish government, makes BAM the lead contractor on a project to speed up journeys on the commuter route between the North Sea oil hub of Aberdeen and the far northern city of Inverness.
The company, which has taken on a string of infrastructure contracts in its core north-west European markets this year, is benefiting from an uptick in spending around the region.
The Netherlands has long been a major infrastructure and engineering player, partly thanks to the low-lying coastal country's need to invest heavily in water management, but the post-2008 downturn hit the sector hard.
Earlier this year, engineering contractor Ballast Nedam collapsed and was sold to a Turkish-owned group after cost overruns on several products that it had bid for too aggressively on to bring in work during the slowdown.
Under the new deal, BAM will build 16 miles (25.75 km) of new track and a new station and upgrade signalling systems along the route.
BAM this year completed the 294 million pound Borders Railway, a two-year project to build a new railway linking the Scottish capital Edinburgh with the country's south-east. ($1 = 0.6470 pounds) (Reporting By Thomas Escritt; Editing by Keith Weir)