What happened

Kishorn Port, on Scotland's west coast in Wester Ross, is preparing to go to market with a £30m contract for a new 150 metre deep water quay, Construction News reported this week. The East Quay will be built on land reclaimed during the port's £42.2m first phase of expansion, and will offer 12 metres of water depth below chart datum, enough to handle the vessels and structures used in offshore wind, decommissioning and other marine energy work.

The scope includes sheet and combi piling, tie rods, precast and in situ concrete capping beams, two piled mooring dolphins linked by steel walkway bridges, and the usual fit out of bollards, ladders, lighting and services. Kishorn Port Limited intends to shortlist up to five firms for the principal contractor role, with a formal contract notice expected in September and tender documents following in November. The port is targeting contract award in April 2027 and a construction start that June.

Why it matters for the market

Kishorn is a small port with an outsized role in the offshore wind supply chain. Its dry dock is one of the few UK facilities capable of handling the scale of structures used in floating and fixed offshore wind, and this second phase is a direct bet that decommissioning and offshore wind fabrication work on the west coast will keep growing. It also fits a wider pattern this year of ports and quaysides upgrading capacity ahead of the next wave of offshore wind consents, rather than waiting for contracts to land first.

The long lead time, a contract notice in September for a construction start in mid 2027, is typical of marine civils, where piling and quay works sit behind detailed marine licensing and environmental consent. It gives contractors an unusually long runway to build a bid team and resource plan.

What it means for careers and hiring

This is a shortlist process, not yet a contract award, but it is worth flagging now for anyone with marine or heavy civils experience: piling engineers, marine civils project managers, and QSs who have worked on quay, jetty or dock schemes. Scottish civils contractors with a marine track record, the kind of firms that could plausibly make Kishorn's shortlist of five, will be assembling bid teams over the next month, and that is exactly the point in a tender cycle where experienced estimators and pre-construction staff get pulled onto a scheme early.

More broadly, if you are building a career around the energy transition rather than general building work, marine and coastal civils is one of the quieter growth areas. It is less visible than the big offshore wind farm contracts themselves, but essential to delivering them, and currently short of contractors and site teams with genuine marine experience. A move into that specialism now, while ports like Kishorn are still at the procurement stage, is easier than trying to break in once the tender is awarded and teams are already resourced.