Pick Everard completes cost and project role on Thames Valley Police forensic centre

Pick Everard has completed its cost management, project management and contract administration role on Thames Valley Police's new forensic services centre in Bicester, the consultancy announced on 15 October 2026.

The three-storey complex, with a separate plant building, brings the force's crime scene investigation, fingerprint, digital forensics and laboratory teams onto one site in place of what Pick Everard described as a number of outdated and dispersed facilities. Willmott Dixon was main contractor and AtkinsRéalis designed the building.

Pick Everard said its services were provided through the NHS SBS framework. Willmott Dixon, in its own completion announcement on 5 August 2026, said the project was procured through the Southern Construction Framework (SCF). Neither firm has said how the two routes relate to each other.

Matt Rollins, director of cost management at Pick Everard, said: "we worked closely to implement changes, reduce project risks and maintain control over budgets, helping to deliver an impressive facility where specialist teams can now work together in one place".

The programme

The building did not finish to its original timetable. When Willmott Dixon was named preferred contractor on 17 February 2023, it said construction was expected to start in summer 2023 and complete in winter 2024/25. The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley repeated that target when a ground-breaking ceremony marked the start of work on 10 August 2023.

By the time the project topped out on 26 March 2025, Willmott Dixon was saying construction would complete the following year. According to the contractor's project page, practical completion was reached in July 2026, and the force's careers site records a handover event on Thursday 16 July 2026. No source has given a reason for the change in programme.

Richard Poulter, managing director for Willmott Dixon in the South, said: "A forensic centre has to work as three buildings at once".

The building

Willmott Dixon said the centre provides a working environment for about 200 staff, uses an in-situ reinforced concrete primary frame and was delivered to BIM Level 2. It sits within the Bicester eco-town development on force-owned land near Avonbury Business Park on Howes Lane, and apprenticeship and T Level placements were provided during construction.

Pick Everard said the building includes specialist laboratories, digital forensic facilities and training areas for staff and students, and has been designed to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating.

Cherwell District Council's planning committee resolved to grant permission on 9 February 2023, subject to completion of a Section 106 agreement, according to the Police and Crime Commissioner. Atkins, as it was then named, was appointed multi-disciplinary design consultant at the outset.

Why it was built

Pick Everard describes the centre as the flagship building of the force's Forensic Improvement Programme. The Police and Crime Commissioner said in 2023 that the programme would see significant investment over three years, including new front-line digital forensic tools, resources for forensic accreditation and recruitment of additional staff across the Forensic Investigation Unit. The Bicester building is intended to become the force's main forensics hub.

Deputy Chief Constable Ben Snuggs said at topping out that forensic science is an absolutely critical investigative capability for policing.

What happens next

Practical completion is not the end of the job. Willmott Dixon said fit-out and commissioning work was continuing before the centre becomes fully operational, and the force said in July that there was still work to do. Mr Snuggs said in Pick Everard's announcement that he looked forward to colleagues moving into the building over the coming months.