A contract worth up to £60 million to transform a 32-mile stretch of the A9 into dual carriageway has been awarded to a California-based company.
The road is being transformed between Perth and Inverness and Scottish Transport Minister Keith Brown announced the contract to upgrade a second of three stages had been awarded to Jacobs. The US firm took over Scottish engineering company Babtie Group in 2004 and employs some 1,000 staff in Scotland.
The contract, worth between £40m to £60m, will see the section between Pass of Birnam and Glen Garry dualled. Work should begin next month.
Mr Brown said: "This is another step forward for this mammoth project, and underlines our determination to bring forward benefits to road users as soon as we can.
"This multi-million pound investment also complements other work being progressed on the ground to improve the safety and performance of the A9."
Mr Brown said this included the installation of average speed cameras, which would come into effect in October and ground investigation work on the Kincraig-Dalraddy scheme, which is expected to begin construction in 2015/16.
Colorado-based CH2MHill and Glasgow firm Fairhurst won the first design contract, for the 27-mile Glen Garry to Dalraddy section.
The third and final contract, for Dalraddy-Inverness, is due to be awarded by the end of the year.
In all, about 80 miles of road is being upgraded and Mr Brown said the work was on schedule to be completed by 2025.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article