Barr Construction has been awarded a £25 million contract for a new building complex at University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus in Roslin, Midlothian.

The Atkins-designed scheme is to provide veterinary students and university staff with specialist research facilities, including teaching laboratories, offices and an exhibition space. The innovation centre and campus hub at Easter Bush will provide incubator space for animal bioscience; specialist facilities for research and further campus facilities including a shop, public outreach centre and multi faith room.

This will be one of the final projects delivered under the Barr Construction banner following the recent merger with McLaughlin & Harvey.

The centre is to include a glazed atrium with the building incorporating a series of bridges at higher levels to link laboratory spaces. As well as the new innovation centre, Atkins is also designing an associated energy centre that will provide the building and the wider community with heat.

Main contractors Barr Construction will create bright and airy laboratories with 285 workstations and will offer shared support areas including tissue culture rooms, incubator space, cold rooms, dark rooms, and changing facilities.

Adjacent to the laboratories, office spaces will provide meeting rooms and interactive space for over 380 scientists; extending and promoting the ongoing collaboration between the UK Bioscience research base and The Roslin Institute, Royal Dick School of Veterinary Studies and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), who are already based on the campus.

The iconic building will accommodate the International Centre for Livestock Improvement and Midlothian Science Outreach Centre.

Paul Griffen, construction director at Barr Construction, said: “The new building of the Easter Bush Innovation Centre will be an iconic gateway building within the Easter Bush Campus for the University of Edinburgh, and will act as a visual indicator of the University’s commitment to research excellence.

“We are enormously proud to be playing the key role in delivering such an outstanding building and are committed to ensuring it is completed to the very highest standards.”

Val White, Campus Operating Officer at the Easter Bush Campus, said: “This building will bring together the research and enterprise activities into a vibrant interactive core at the heart of the campus.”

John Mackenzie, Chief Executive of the Easter Bush Innovation Centre, said “This provides an opportunity to extend and promote our collaborative commercial research, while providing the necessary space to extend and develop strategic partnering opportunities with large and small businesses.”

Barr Construction will begin work in April 2015 and the extension is expected to be complete by December 2016.