The Interserve-led consortium Environments for Learning (E4L) has achieved financial close on the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) contract with Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council.

Interserve will deliver construction and facilities management (FM) services worth more than £280 million in Sandwell's major schools development programme.

The contract marks the beginning of a 10-year strategic partnership, with E4L joining Sandwell's Local Education Partnership (LEP) alongside the council and BSF Investments. The length of the agreement gives the LEP the opportunity to transform education for generations of students: it is expected that 20 schools will benefit from the scheme, which will provide state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities and services for community use.

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Construction will involve both new build and major refurbishment and will include a mix of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and conventional design and build projects.

The programme will take place over two waves, with a total construction value of over £240 million.

Once the facilities are ready Interserve will provide FM services to schools across both waves for 25 years.

The initial projects in the first wave will be the Rowley Learning Campus, with 1,835 pupil places, and the Smethwick Learning Campus, with 1,623. Interserve will deliver construction services worth £66 million and, after they open for the autumn term of 2011, FM services worth £46 million.

At Rowley, a new-build scheme procured under PFI, three secondary schools will be relocated into the new facilities, retaining their separate identities: St Michael's Church of England School Business and Enterprise College; Westminster School; and Whiteheath Education Centre.

The Smethwick campus, a refurbishment using design and build, will be created from the current Holly Lodge High School College of Science and will incorporate the Ruskin House pupil referral unit already located there.

Interserve will invest £2.1 million of equity and subordinated debt in the project, representing 36% of the whole. Its consortium financial partner is Barclays Private Equity.

(CD/BMcC)