In June 2023, it was announced that Rolls-Royce is planning to double the size of its Submarines site in Derby to meet the growth in demand from the Royal Navy. This is also a key enabler in the company’s commitment to provide all the reactors that will power the future attack submarines as part of the Australia, UK, US trilateral agreement, known as AUKUS.
This increase in demand will see new manufacturing and office facilities being built and will create 1,170 skilled roles across a range of disciplines, including manufacturing and engineering.
As the work will take place within the nuclear licensed site at Raynesway, the construction of fissile facilities adds a level of complexity and rigour above and beyond that of traditional builds. Balfour Beatty were announced as non-fissile construction partners last year so are able to bring consistency across the construction of the whole Raynesway expansion work.
Having previously announced the fissile design partners as PROPEL, a joint venture between AtkinsRéalis and Mott MacDonald, this next milestone will see Balfour Beatty work with the partners to bring the design of these new nuclear manufacturing facilities to life.
This also marks an important milestone for the expansion programme, with the full collective of partners selected across both our fissile and non-fissile programmes. Leading multi-disciplinary professional services consultancy WSP was announced as the non-fissile design partner in March last year.