Left to right: Oliver Curlett, head of defence and security at WSP and Rolls-Royce Submarines Infrastructure director Terry Meighan

Rolls-Royce has announced leading multi-disciplinary professional services consultancy WSP as its non-fissile design partner — a key milestone in the expansion of its Raynesway site. In June last year, it was announced that Roll-Royce would be doubling the size of its submarines site in Derby to meet the growth in demand from the Royal Navy, and as a result of last year’s AUKUS announcement.

This increase in demand will see new manufacturing and office facilities being built and will create 1,170 skilled roles across a range of disciplines, including manufacturing and engineering. It will be WSP’s role to design these new facilities and the infrastructure that links the site together.

Rolls-Royce Submarines Infrastructure director Terry Meighan said: “AUKUS will not be delivered by one or two companies. It will take strong partnerships across the whole supply chain to meet the increased demands for the critical work we do. Selecting WSP as our design partner is the start of our journey to meeting the demands placed on us.

“Throughout the procurement process WSP stood out when demonstrating its technical capability, capacity and culture. Importantly, it also shared our vision and commitment to delivering our commitments to the MoD and the wider AUKUS agreement.”

World-leading capability
Oliver Curlett, head of defence and security at WSP, said: “We are proud to be partnering with Rolls-Royce to design optimised, resilient and complex critical infrastructure which enables ongoing delivery of its world-leading capability to customers, both now and into the future. We are excited to bring our expertise to the team and are committed to ensuring collaborative delivery of Rolls-Royce’s infrastructure programme, in support of AUKUS and as a key part of wider MoD strategic commitments.”

The next milestone in Rolls-Royce’s 10-year expansion programme is to select the non-fissile construction partner, who will bring WSP’s designs to life. They will be tasked with building the manufacturing and office facilities and the adjoining site infrastructure. The winning firm will be announced in the coming weeks.

Rolls-Royce Submarines currently employs more than 4,500 people and designs, manufactures and provides in-service support to the pressurised water reactors that power every boat in the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet. WSP is one of the world’s leading professional services consulting firms with 67,000 employees worldwide and over 9,000 people in its UK business.

Rolls-Royce is currently supporting the existing Astute and Dreadnought boat build programmes through the delivery of reactor plant and associated components. Additionally, it provides frontline support across the world for reactor plant equipment from its operations centre in Derby and supports the submarines when in the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard and the naval bases at Devonport and Faslane.