Southwark estate work resumes: delivery risks and completion notes for project teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Work has restarted on two nearly complete residential blocks at Southwark’s St Saviours Estate in Bermondsey after ARJ Construction, which had finished about 90% of the works, went into administration in April 2024. Newly appointed contractor Bloom Construction, founded in 2023, is now tasked with delivering 40 council homes at the Fendall and Maltby site by spring 2026. The remaining scope covers final fit-out, M&E commissioning, contaminated soil removal, external works and landscaping, lift installation, play equipment and full building control compliance.
Technical Brief
- Remaining works package explicitly includes contaminated soil removal, implying legacy ground-quality or brownfield constraints.
- Scope also covers full M&E commissioning, indicating prior first-fix completion but incomplete systems integration and testing.
- Lift installation is outstanding, so shaft tolerances, fixings and fire-stopping will need re-verification before sign-off.
- External works and landscaping completion will determine final drainage falls, surface water management and access arrangements.
- Play equipment installation introduces additional impact-attenuating surfacing, edge protection and inspection obligations pre-handover.
- Full building control compliance suggests updated checks against any regulatory changes since ARJ’s original design approvals.
Our Take
Among the 33 Infrastructure stories in our database, very few involve schemes that were over 80% complete when the main contractor collapsed, so the 90% build-out at St Saviours Estate puts Bloom Construction in a relatively unusual position of inheriting primarily testing, commissioning and defect-risk rather than full construction risk.
Bloom Construction’s establishment in 2023 and rapid move onto a high-profile Southwark Council estate contrasts with many other UK local-authority housing jobs in our coverage, which tend to be let to longer-established Tier 2 contractors, suggesting councils are being pushed to widen their bidder pools after several mid-market failures.
The 40 new council homes at the Fendall and Maltby site feed into a cluster of London social-housing pieces in our infrastructure coverage, where delivery slippage after contractor administrations has often triggered political scrutiny; this resumption by a Stevenage-based firm is likely to be watched closely by other boroughs with stalled estate infill projects.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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