It’s the latest in a series of major projects the company is responsible for delivering in the higher education sector, following similar facilities for universities that include Cambridge, Bournemouth, Birmingham City, West London and Brighton with a combined value of over £200 million.

Willmott Dixon’s project for the University of Kent will provide a new four-storey learning hub that will be home to the Kent Business School and the School of Mathematics, Statistics & Actuarial Science. By bringing together academics, students, researchers and administrative staff from these schools into a modern new facility, the hub will give the university approximately 8,000m2 of state-of-the-art space that will help attract the best people in the competitive higher education sector.

Willmott Dixon’s Kent based local team will start shortly, with work completed by the end of 2016. Also on the scheme are project manager BNP Paribas Real Estate, architect Penoyre and Prasad, M&E provider Max Fordham, structural engineer Price & Myers plus Betteridge & Milsom as QS.

Roger Forsdyke, managing director for Willmott Dixon in the Southern Home Counties:

”This hub will give each of the departments their own distinct learning area that will attract students and academics keen to develop their knowledge and research using these high-tech facilities. Importantly, we’ll be bringing our experience of higher education and working in live environments on major hub projects to ensure we create a centrepiece that will provide an excellent learning environment for many generations to come.”