CityFibre brings in Bechtel for support

CityFibre is set to awards £1.5bn in construction contracts in the coming months and mobilise across an additional 29 towns and cities.

Bechtel staff will be integrated with CityFibre’s existing organisational structure, effectively on secondment.

The US engineering company has experience in the communications infrastructure sector, having overseen metro fibre and fibre to the premises (FTTP) rollouts for AT&T, Verizon, XO and Google Fiber in the USA and the Viatel Cerce pan-European network.

CityFibre chief executive Greg Mesch said: “The demand for world-class digital infrastructure deployments from the government, Ofcom and crucially our current and prospective customers, is increasing by the day. Bechtel’s expertise in the delivery of national infrastructure projects will complement our existing teams and ensure we can rapidly increase the number of parallel build projects, while still delivering the high quality of network demanded by our customers and theirs.

“Delivering full fibre nationwide by 2025 is a critical target and a huge undertaking. We are determined to be a major contributor to this target. This landmark partnership with Bechtel is another important demonstration of how CityFibre is doing everything to ensure delivery and maximise our contribution while helping to ensure a healthy and competitive digital infrastructure market.”

John Williams, Bechtel’s UK infrastructure managing director, said: “We will be bringing our skills in rapid mobilisation and large-scale infrastructure delivery to the team. Our agreement with CityFibre is part of a deliberate strategy to diversify and align our UK business with the emerging growth sectors of the economy.”

The first wave of construction contract awards under CityFibre’s accelerated tenders award programme are expected in the coming weeks. The new projects will create thousands of jobs across CityFibre’s construction partners. By the end of 2021, it is anticipated that network construction will be under way in more than 100 towns and cities across the UK.

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