Lendlease Awarded Preferred Bidder on Victoria’s $8b East West Link Project

Lendlease, as part of a consortium, has been awarded preferred bidder status to work on Victoria’s $8 billion East West Link project.

The East West Connect Consortium of Capella Capital, Lendlease, Acciona and Bouygues will enter into final negotiations to deliver the eastern section of the road project, being 6 kilometres connecting the Eastern Freeway with CityLink and including a tunnel. Victorian Treasurer Michael O’Brien said East West Connect had significant experience delivering projects of this size and scale in Australia and overseas.

“Following an extensive evaluation process, the Victorian government will now enter into exclusive negotiations with East West Connect to deliver what is one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects currently out to tender,” he said.

In its full-year results, Lendlease said it had a strong future pipeline of economic infrastructure with $1.8 billion of building and engineering work currently at preferred status. Lendlease chief executive Steve McCann said its Australian construction division had a small resources exposure which meant it was less exposed to the pullback in spending in the sector. Brokers said, in addition, despite the weakening in Australian engineering construction activity, the group’s internal pipeline offered substantial construction work and the restructuring of the business during the past year should help it to better focus on service offerings.