Bovis leads Olympic home race
Bovis has reportedly moved ahead of Barratt in the race to build 5,000 homes in Stratford City, the £4bn Olympic project.
The winning team for the contract, worth hundreds of millions of pounds, will be announced within days. It will be chosen by Westfield, the Australian shopping complex owner and main contractor on the whole project.
It is said to favour fellow Australian group Lend Lease, which owns Bovis and Crosby Homes in the UK.
Lend Lease has set up a consortium that includes French construction group Bouygues to bid for the Olympic homes. Other members are First Base Homes, set up by Sir Stuart Lipton's son Elliot, and East Thames Housing Group, which will assist on constructing affordable housing.
Rival developers have expressed concern about the quality of the 5000 homes to be built, because of the limited budget allowed and the speed at which they will have to be put up. The most likely construction method for many will be flat-pack assemblies that are pre-built off-site.
However, the bidders for the contract insist that this will ensure better quality control and mean the homes returned to the local authorities after the Olympics in 2012 will be longerlasting.
Barratt, which this week spent £2.2bn taking over rival Wilson Bowden, has played down worries that it might not win the Olympic project.
Mark Clare, the new chief executive of Britain's biggest housebuilder, said the number of homes to be built within the Olympics site paled into insignificance next to all the adjoining sites in the regeneration area.
'There is no big scheme we are not involved in,' he added.
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