Scottish Futures Trust confirm 78% rise in construction projects

Scotland-wide hub initiative has led to rise in value to £610M in six months.

The Scottish Futures Trust has today announced that the use of the Scotland-wide hub initiative has led to a huge surge in construction projects under construction.

In just six months since the start of the year, community buildings being constructed for public sector organisations has gone up in value from £342M to £610M.

This 78% increase encompasses a total of 40 projects; 15 for community facilities, 19 schools and six in the health sector. The breakdown in value shows the health projects totalling £111.2M, the school developments valued at £424.4M, and community facilities at £74.4M.

Led by the Scottish Futures Trust, the Scotland-wide hub initiative is an inclusive scheme that brings community planning partners and several other public bodies together with a private sector development partner to form a hubCo, which increases joint working to ultimately deliver the best new community facilities.

It is run by the Scottish Futures Trust which was established by the Scottish Government seven years ago to deliver value for money across public sector infrastructure investment.

The hub initiative is clearly working, with the number of projects being delivered, particularly in the construction sector.

Not only this, the initiative has been a huge benefit to SMEs who have been awarded 78% of the projects, while construction employment is also flourishing thanks to the scheme.

At present, more than 7,300 jobs are supported through the projects within the hub initiative. It does not end there though, because apprentices and graduates are also reaping the reward of these schemes.

There have been almost 150 new graduate places allocated and more than 200 apprenticeships and trainee places within the initiative.

David MacDonald is the hub Programme Director at Scottish Futures Trust and he hailed this “innovative” initiative, while also explaining why he expects the surge in construction projects to continue.

He said: “The hub programme is an innovative approach to develop and deliver best-value community facilities which provides public bodies with a quick and efficient way of getting their projects into construction.

“The benefits of using hub as the preferred delivery partner is reflected in the huge increase in projects under construction.

“With 78% of hub construction contracts being awarded to SMEs, many thousands of local jobs are being protected.

“We see this momentum continuing as there’s well over £900M of community projects still in the early stages of development which are due to start on site in the next 12 to 24 months through our ever growing pipeline of work.”

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