CONSTRUCTION group Trant has won a £12m design-and-build contract to provide the intake and outfall pipework for a new power station due to be built in Hampshire in four years' time.

The main civil works for the new cooling water system will take 12 months and will see up to 65 employees from the Southampton-based firm on site.

It was awarded by German industrial giant Siemens on behalf of ESB International, an arm of the Irish Electri-city Supply Board.

Trant, which has nearly 800 staff, also won a £2m contract the month before last to help build an electricity sub-station a few hundred metres away from where the gas turbine plant will be.

The power station is being built next to a Southampton Water landmark - the futuristic, silver-domed March-wood Incinerator.

Pictured near the works, which have just started, are Trant's project manager, Mark Blackler, left, and construction director Gerry Somers, with Trant PA Nikki Pullen. Gerry said: "This is the biggest civil engineering contract of its kind for us, and it's great to have won the tender against some of the biggest players in the UK."

It is the second time Siemens has been in the Hampshire headlines in a week after it won a £5m contract to read water meters across the county and the Isle of Wight. Over the three years of the deal with Southern Water Services, Siemens' staff will read water meters at 350,000 homes and businesses.