RAF Valley runway contract awarded

North Stone and White Mountain JV win £20M contract

The contract to refurbish two runways at RAF Valley has been awarded by the Ministry of Defence and Defence Infrastructure Organisation.

A joint venture of North Stone and White Mountain will commence work on the contract next month, with an estimated completion of February 2017. The base will remain operational throughout the works, with only four weeks of non-flying time allowed through the contract, presenting its own challenges to North Stone and White Mountain.

Worth some £20M, the works will see the refurbishment of the runway, which was last resurface in 1995, plus link taxiways and a new section of airside perimeter road, new visual aids, aeronautical lighting and signage. The life of the runway will be extended by a further 25 years through the development.

RAF Valley is primarily, a fast jet training base, with mostly Hawk aircraft flown from here. While the runway is suitable for the Hawks, imprvements need to be made to account for the larger Hercules, Tornados and Typhoons.

Defence Equipment and Support has already announced some £1.1Bn of investment in fast jet training on sites across the UK, with this site being the latest. The investment will continue to modernise military flying training in the UK providing a new Fixed Wing flying training system plus modern training aircraft and up-to-date ground based training devices such as simulators and classroom learning for aircrew across the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps.

Alan Baker, DIO’s Project Manager, said: “We’re pleased to have awarded the contract for the work at RAF Valley and are looking forward to getting underway. DIO invests in infrastructure to support the armed forces to live, work, train and deploy and the work at RAF Valley will be an important part of that, especially in the light of the investment in fast jet training announced by Defence Equipment and Support.

 

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