Farrans has been appointed by Manchester Airports Group to build new skylink walkways at London Stansted Airport, connecting the terminal to satellite buildings housing departure and arrival gates, a contract that signals the scale and specialism of work on offer as UK airport operators accelerate capital investment to meet rising passenger demand.

Farrans, headquartered in Belfast, is a civil engineering and building contractor with more than 80 years in the sector, employing over 600 people across the UK and Ireland. It was acquired by John Sisk & Son in November 2025, becoming part of Ireland's largest construction and civil engineering group.

Manchester Airports Group, which owns London Stansted, is running a £1.1bn (€1.29bn) transformation of the airport's terminal, with a three-bay extension adding 16,500 sq m of retail and dining space as its centrepiece.

The contract is among the first major UK wins reported under Farrans' new ownership, an early test of whether Sisk's backing changes the scale of work the Belfast contractor can compete for.

The skylinks carry sequencing weight beyond their own scope: decommissioning the existing people-mover system they replace is what frees the space needed for the terminal's later extension phases, making this package a gating item for the wider £1.1bn programme rather than a standalone job.

For Farrans and Sisk, converting an existing design, planning and enabling relationship with MAG into a construction contract strengthens a UK aviation portfolio that already includes the Leeds Bradford Airport expansion and Belfast Grand Central Station. For MAG, retaining a contractor embedded since the early design phases reduces handover risk while the airport keeps operating.

Stansted served 30 million passengers for the first time in its history in the year to March 2026, and MAG has secured planning permission to grow the airport to 51 million passengers over the next two decades, with the current £1.1bn programme targeted at reaching 43 million.

For the sector, the win illustrates a pattern worth tracking as consolidation accelerates in Ireland and Northern Ireland's construction market: contractors absorbed into larger groups are starting to surface in bigger cross-border UK infrastructure contracts, with combined balance sheets and portfolios doing some of the competitive work.

Source: Construction News / New Civil Engineer / Travel Weekly