Refurbish, Reposition or Replace?
Adam Worrall, Managing Director of Willmott Dixon Interiors, reflects on UKREiiF 2026 and the decisions shaping the future of the UK office
This summer the West Midlands Combined Authority published a candid assessment of its own region. Its State of the Region 2026 report describes an economy that has stabilised and is strengthening in places, but where deep inequalities are hardening into the central risk to future growth.
It warns that growth will keep concentrating unless investment in housing, transport, regeneration and skills is aligned to reach the places most disconnected from opportunity. I have run our Midlands business for 20 years, and that matches what I see. The most visible investment is in the city centre. Much of the need sits a few miles out.
That is why I see Constructing West Midlands as more than a route to market. We have just retained our place on its third iteration, Constructing West Midlands 3 (CWM3), and that matters well beyond our own order book.
Frameworks decide where public investment lands
A regional framework is one of the main routes by which public money reaches communities. Who owns it, who can use it and who sits on it shape where investment goes and how much value stays local.
As a publicly owned and managed framework, CWM is designed to make procurement simpler and more accessible. Acivico oversaw the procurement of CWM3, which is open to councils, schools, colleges, NHS bodies, housing providers and blue light services across the West Midlands. It is free to access, with rates competitively tendered through the procurement process.
What 15 years on one framework teaches you
We have been a CWM partner since 2011 and have delivered more than £250m of projects through it: the National College for High Speed Rail, the University of Warwick's Sports and Wellness Hub, the University of Birmingham's School of Engineering, and three schools for Sandwell Council that created 990 additional places.
At Harvest View in Sandwell (below), 80 en-suite rooms care for people who are ready to leave hospital but not yet ready to go home, freeing acute beds. That is economic infrastructure as much as social care.
Long relationships buy continuity. Our local teams, supply chain and client relationships carry from scheme to scheme, backed by what the rest of our business has learned nationally. A one-off tender cannot buy that.
Kingshurst and Rugby show what regeneration takes
In Kingshurst, Solihull, the first phase of the village centre regeneration delivered 25 net zero carbon (regulated) social rented homes, with air source heat pumps and integrated solar PV to cut running costs and the risk of fuel poverty.
Alongside the homes we ran a Building Lives Academy, funded by the Combined Authority and delivered with Solihull College and RMF Training. Across seven cohorts, 29 local people who were not in education, employment or training learned on our site. Nine have gone into jobs.
Phase 2, now in preconstruction, is the £19m heart of the masterplan: a community, health and retail building targeting BREEAM Excellent, with six new homes and a vicarage. It has Solihull Council approval and, since July, £8m of Combined Authority grant funding.
In Rugby, the former Biart Place site is now Navigation Way (above): 100 affordable homes for Rugby Borough Council, procured through CWM and fully occupied by households from the council's waiting list. The £22m scheme was unlocked by £6.8m from Homes England and £2m from the Get Building Fund, which our Development Solutions team helped the council secure. Whole project support starts with the funding case, not the contract.
Both carry the same honest lesson. Regeneration in places like these rarely stacks up on commercial terms alone. It needs public funding, patient partners and a delivery route that does not have to be re-procured at every stage. A regional framework supplies the last of those.
A framework place is a licence to compete, not a promise of work
Retaining a place gives us the right to be considered. It does not guarantee a single project, and nor should it. Clients come back to a framework, and to a contractor, only when the experience is worth repeating.
CWM3 also raises the bar. We sit on the £1.3bn major works lot, which covers projects generally worth more than £10m and can be used for major or complex specialist schemes outside the West Midlands. That reach is useful, but the regional dividend must not be diluted as the framework grows.
Our strategy to 2030, Building our Future, rests on exceptional service, local focus enhanced by national strength, and whole project support. Local focus is measured by what stays here: 80% of our spend with businesses within 50 miles of our sites, 80% of our supply chain made up of local SMEs, and more than 100 apprenticeships and placements. The pipeline we carry into CWM3 includes Kingshurst Phase 2 and, back in Rugby, Avon Valley School and Performing Arts College, a £23m scheme expanding secondary places for Warwickshire County Council.
Growth that reaches the places that need it
The Combined Authority is right that no single institution can close the region's gaps. Neither can a single contractor. But a framework that joins councils, contractors and local supply chains around a visible pipeline can direct investment to where the need is greatest.
The West Midlands does not lack ambition or investment. The test for the next four years is whether that investment reaches Kingshurst as reliably as it reaches the city centre.