Costain has been improving the lives of people through infrastructure since 1865.
We have built airports, petrochemical plants, waste treatment works and schools – creating the building blocks of modern life and improving the quality of life of the people who use them.
1865: Richard Costain and his future brother-in-law made the short crossing from the Isle of Man to the booming port of Liverpool where they successfully began to trade as jobbing builders and undertakers.
1918: Costain builds steel workers’ houses at Redcar, Cleveland. Due to shortage of bricks after WWI, Costain employs steel frames with concrete cladding.
1929: Costain starts building large estates around London, the largest being a site for 7,500 homes in South Hornchurch.
1939: Completion of Trans-Iranian Railway, covering 11 challenging miles through the Alborz Mountains and requiring both viaduct building and tunnelling.
1943: Listed on the London Stock Exchange. Costain participates in the construction of the Mulberry floating harbours for D-Day. Constructed of pre-cast concrete, each caisson was typically 60m long, 18m high and 18m wide.
1951: Costain completes the buildings and infrastructure for the Festival of Britain, South Bank.
1960: Completion of Al Shuwaikh Desalination Plant in Kuwait, incorporating the world’s largest flash evaporation units.
1971: Costain was the first UK contractor to win the Queens Award for Export Achievement.
1972: Costain completes world’s largest dry dock and the Middle East’s largest deep-water port in Port Rashid, Dubai.
1984: Completion of Thames Barrier. Since 1984, the barrier has been used over 200 times for flood defence, protecting 1.4 million Londoners and £320bn of property.
1993: Costain and partners complete the Channel Tunnel, which remains the world’s longest undersea tunnel.
2007: Completion of King’s Cross western concourse and restoration of London’s St Pancras Station, which when originally built in 1876, was the world’s largest single-span structure.
2009: A Costain-Skanska joint venture selected as one of several contractors for Crossrail's advance works civils framework agreement, a four-year programme worth £100 million.
2010: Costain begins a ten-year decommissioning framework contract with Magnox. Awarded The London Power Tunnels project, creating a new 32km electricity superhighway deep below London.
2014: Completed the Evaporator D project for Sellafield Ltd. Remains one of the largest nuclear projects to be completed in the UK.
2015: Part of the joint venture with VINCI Construction Grands Projets and Bachy Soletanche, delivering the eastern section of Tideway.
2018: Costain awarded a £400m contract to redevelop London Bridge Station.
2019: Completion of the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon Improvement Scheme.
2021: Costain and Mott MacDonald joint venture awarded Babcock infrastructure delivery partner role at Babcock’s Devonport Dockyard.
2022: Completion of the Paddington Elizabeth Line station, providing new journey options for those travelling through central London.
2023: Completion of the upgraded Gatwick Airport station to handle growing passenger numbers, doubling the space available.
2024: Delivery of new nine-mile widened A30 dual carriageway between Chiverton and Carland Cross in Cornwall.
Today, we’re solving some of the UK’s most complex infrastructure challenges, and our work remains vital to improving the lives of millions of people across the UK.
