BRISTOL FACILITY TO FUTURE-PROOF COMBAT AIR CAPABILITY FOR DECADES

Rolls-Royce has selected McLaughlin & Harvey for a contract in excess of £100 million for the design and construction of a new facility at its existing Bristol site. The facility, which is customer-funded, will provide a dedicated space for research, manufacturing and assembly, creating significant capability for new product development in support of future air combat. It is scheduled to break ground later in 2026, with the contract award marking the acceleration from final design into active construction.

Paul Pennington, Senior Vice President of Infrastructure, Defence at Rolls-Royce, said the company was very pleased to announce the contract award to McLaughlin & Harvey, describing the facility as a physical manifestation of Rolls-Royce’s commitment to novel technology and agile ways of working. He said that by embedding previous learnings, Rolls-Royce was creating a space for state-of-the-art technology development to ensure it met its ambitious customer commitments while future-proofing capabilities for decades to come.

A DIGITAL-FIRST, CONNECTED FACILITY FOR RESEARCH, TEST AND MANUFACTURE

Built as a connected and digital-first facility, the new Bristol building will accelerate pace and drive efficiencies across research, test and manufacturing simultaneously, while accommodating high-tech and innovative technology development. The architecture is designed to foster agile ways of working — enabling faster iteration between design, testing and production phases than conventional sequential processes allow. When operational, the facility will support the developments required by next-generation combat aircraft programmes, underpinned by ongoing enabling work to improve safety, security and resilience across the site.

MCLAUGHLIN & HARVEY: A THIRD PROJECT BUILT ON PROVEN ROLLS-ROYCE EXPERIENCE

McLaughlin & Harvey is a UK-based construction and civil engineering company with extensive experience across complex manufacturing and defence facilities. The Bristol contract is the third collaboration between McLaughlin & Harvey and Rolls-Royce, following two advanced manufacturing projects documented on McLaughlin & Harvey’s own published project portfolio at mclh.co.uk.

The first previous project was the Aero Disc Manufacturing Facility at Rolls-Royce’s Washington site in the north-east of England: a 72,118-square-foot design-and-build programme that created a manufacturing environment capable of producing more than 1,500 fan and turbine discs per year for both Civil Aerospace and Defence Aerospace engine programmes. Delivered in two phases — the first encompassing the main manufacturing hall with eight overhead cranes, heavy reinforced-concrete slab and broach pits, CMM clean rooms and ancillary areas, and the second the full equipment fit-out — McLaughlin & Harvey served as principal contractor throughout.

The second project was the PCO (Primary Component Operations) Extension at Rolls-Royce’s Sinfin site in Derby, where McLaughlin & Harvey drew on its prior Fleet Support Facility experience to deliver a business-critical factory extension incorporating metallurgy labs and 30-ton and 50-ton crane facilities, alongside a new four-storey, 400-desk office building to consolidate staff previously split between two sites. A central objective throughout was minimising disruption to live Rolls-Royce operations during construction, achieved through phased sequencing and a seamless physical connection between the existing facility and the new extension.

Dougie McCusker, Construction Director at McLaughlin & Harvey, said the company had a longstanding partnership with Rolls-Royce and had completed two advanced manufacturing projects for them, and that its Midlands and South West team would draw on that experience and broader expertise in complex manufacturing environments to support Rolls-Royce in building a state-of-the-art manufacturing and assembly facility in Bristol.