Miller Construction has been selected as the preferred bidder to design, build, finance and maintain new educational facilities and provide services for batch 2 of the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP) programme in the North East of England.

The firm beat out competition from two others companies that were shortlisted in mid September 2013, Laing O'Rourke and Sir Robert McAlpine. The batch is the second of five batches to be procured through the government's new Pf2 private finance initiative.

The proposed term of the contract will include an estimated 24 month construction phase and a 25 year operational term from the service commencement date of the final school to be completed in this batch. The estimated capital value of the providing the new build schools is GBP120 million.

The PSBP north east private finance batch comprises of 12 schools including 2 first schools - Hetton School in Sunderland and Mandale Mill Primary School in Stockton on Tees. Construction is due to start from December 2014 with all planned completions due by August 2016.

The educational facilities will be delivered using the private finance model to provide twelve new build primary and secondary schools in the North East of England. The schools involved in this second batch are:

• Mandale Mill Primary School
• Longbenton Community College
• Front Street Community Primary School
• Lingey House Primary School
• Roman Road Primary School
• Seaham School of Technology
• Bedlingtonshire Community High School
• The Duchess's Community High School
• Laurence Jackson School
• Hylton Castle Primary School
• Hetton School
• Shiney Row Primary School

Shortlisted bidders have been announced for the Batch 3 - Priority School Building Programme (North West) and Batch 4 - Priority School Building Programme (Yorkshire).

The first batch of privately financed priority schools has been awarded to a joint venture between Interserve and Kajima.

The tender process for the  fifth Priority School Building Programme (PSBP) private finance batch  was issued in early April.