Grangegorman PPP Goes to Market

One of the biggest single projects within the Grangegorman re-development was today put out to market by the Minister for Education and Skills, Mr. Ruairi Quinn TD. Two new state of the art buildings, which together will accommodate over 11,000 students and staff from Dublin Institute of Technology, will be delivered through this project and will be developed in the form of a public private partnership.

The Chairman of the Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA), Mr. John Monahan, said today that this project moving forward was one of the strongest signals to date of the Government’s commitment to the Grangegorman project. He said “The decision by Government to bring this PPP project to market is a vote of confidence in the Grangegorman project and what it will deliver for the stakeholders involved and the country as a whole. The GDA has been working hard since 2006 to reach milestones such as this one today.”

The Chief Executive of the GDA, Mr. Michael Hand, echoed the sentiment of the chairman saying “There have been many false dawns on the Grangegorman project and we have suffered our fair share of setbacks, but today’s announcement reflects the real hard work that has gone into progressing this project and shows the significance of it.”

Mr Hand went on “The construction phase that the Agency is now entering into will generate in the region of 2,000 jobs between now and 2017. As we speak the Agency is about to appoint a contractor for a major civil engineering contract which will see the development of all of the site infrastructure and public realm. In addition we will soon appoint a contractor to refurbish several old structures onsite which will bring the first DIT students to Grangegorman in 2014.”

The two new buildings which will be developed through this PPP project will, from September 2017, be home to the College of Arts and Tourism, the College of Sciences and Health and part of the College of Engineering and the Built Environment.

As a Public Private Partnership, the procurement process for this project will be run by the National Development Finance Agency (NDFA). The GDA has been working closely with the NDFA along with DIT over the past year to arrive at this significant moment.