Several firms including Bouygues-owned Leadbitter, Willmott Dixon and Vinci are now expected to submit bids in the next few week for the design and build contract.

The three-storey 100,000 sq ft building will include teaching facilities for engineering, construction and hair and beauty students.

According to the college’s programme schedule work on the new Y-shaped college block is due to start at the end of May to open for the start of the 2015 academic year.

The client project team is made up of Buro Happold, acting as building services consultant, Hydrock as structural engineers and Gleeds as cost consultant.

Architect AWW has designed the building to be highly sustainable with photo-voltaic cells to help achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’