The Belfast headquartered firm has won a £17m deal to bring the University College London Courtauld Building research lab back into operation.

Once the revamp is finished it will once again be home to researchers, this time from the Medical Research Councils prestigious Prion Unit, researching the human variant form of mad cow disease.

Since its construction in 1926 the Courtauld Building continued to service pioneering scientific research until 2008 where it has remained unoccupied since.

The Prion Unit is one of the world’s leading research centres studying degenerative diseases of the brain and was formed to pursue a major long-term research strategy in prion diseases such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) and other much commoner causes of dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The project will bring life to a building that has been unoccupied for almost 10 years uplifting the immediate area as a result. External works involve replacing the rear 1980’s façade, roof and providing a new main entrance and relocating it to Cleveland Street.

The interior of the building will be completely refurbished, including removing existing stair cores opens up the foot plate of the building creating a more flexible open plan area.

A specialist laboratory contractor will be appointed to feed into the developing stage E design. The firm is making big in roads into London and late last year beat Balfour and Willmott Dixon to secured the University of London’s high-profile Senate House refurbishment.

Graham was also named as one of 10 firms to have secured places last month on a £200m framework for  new build and refurbishment projects worth up to £5m at four south London hospitals.