Mace Construct’s Daubeny exit from the £184m Oxford laboratory scheme is set for the end of 2026, with the contractor confirming it will complete its current package of work before handing over to a new contractor at the Daubeny Buildings project on Oxford Science Park.
The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) confirmed the arrangement this week, stating it had ‘agreed with Mace Construct that its role on Daubeny will conclude at the end of 2026, following completion of the current package of work’. EIT added: ‘Mace Construct has supported important early stages of the development over the past four years, and we recognise and appreciate the contribution its team has made to the project.’
A Mace Construct spokesperson said: ‘Following the completion of our phase of works at Daubeny, Mace Construct will hand over the next stages of the project to a new contractor. Over the past four years, our team has been proud to play a significant role in the successful delivery of key elements of this important development. Our focus now is on concluding our activities by the end of the year and ensuring a smooth transition.’
Mace Construct Daubeny exit follows revised Foster & Partners design
The transition coincides with a substantial redesign of the scheme. In February 2026, new proposals drawn up by architect Foster & Partners were submitted to the city council. The revised scheme will create 62,000 square metres of laboratory space for the Generative Biology Institute and the Plant Biology Institute.
According to planning documents, the revised approach involves partially demolishing and extending upwards three under-construction laboratory buildings, then linking them with two new atriums to form a single research and development facility. The documents state the three separate blocks ‘do not connect well, making collaboration harder and some laboratory space inefficient’, providing the rationale for the redesign.
Mace Construct was initially appointed to the project by Oxford Science Park in 2024, before being brought back in by EIT, the new owner, last year.
A campus scaled for 7,000 employees across 2 million sq ft
The Daubeny project sits within a much larger ambition for the Oxford Science Park site. According to BBC News, the Daubeny Project is a 450,000 sq ft (41,806 sq m) commercial life science development. Construction has been progressing in phases: Cherwell reported that the first of the three spaces reached topping-out in April 2025.
The Daubeny buildings are one component of a campus that EIT has set out plans to expand considerably. The Ellison Institute of Technology has announced it is looking at laboratory and office spaces covering an area of 2 million sq ft across the broader Oxford campus. EIT’s plans describe the eventual campus as a workspace for a community of up to 7,000 employees, complete with leisure and catering facilities.
The scale of that ambition gives context to the contractor transition: a project of this scope, moving from enabling and early-stage construction into a more complex delivery phase shaped by an entirely revised architectural brief, represents a natural point at which procurement and contractor strategy might be reset.
EIT stated that ‘the Daubeny project will continue to progress as it moves into its next phase of delivery under a new contractor’, with procurement for that incoming contractor now under way ahead of Mace Construct’s planned departure at the close of 2026.
