The pairing has just been selected as preferred bidder for the £170m N11 Arklow-Rathnew primary road upgrade, after winning the N17/N18 Gort to Tuam road scheme in the Republic of Ireland late last year.

The firms beat competition from a consortium involving the Spanish motorway company Globalvía, Australia’s Macquarie and Irish firm P Elliott who fell into receivership earlier this year.

The proposed scheme consists of construction of dual carriageway and associated side roads to link the N11 Arklow Bypass with the Ashford Rathnew Bypass.

The scheme consists of 16 km of new dual carriageway, two interchanges at Beehive and Jack White’s Crossroads, and construction of 5km km single carriageway road running parallel to the new N11 carriageway, five under-bridges and three over-bridges.