Levelling work under way for £3.85m Jaguar Land Rover expansion

O'Brien Contractors, based in Leamington Spa, won the contract and are employing 30 people on site at the i54 site on the border of Wolverhampton and Staffordshire.

The work is being carried out while JLR's application for an 85,000sqm L-shaped development alongside its existing plant is being considered by South Staffordshire District Council. The firm is set to almost double the size of its factory by the M54 and create around 1,000 more jobs.

Diggers and dumper trucks are now on site levelling the ground ready for the expansion work to begin.

Groundworks specialist O'Brien has also won a £1.4m project to expand JLR's advanced enginering and design centre in Whitley, Coventry.

The two developments are part of a wider drive by the luxury vehicle manufacturer to invest more than £600m across its Midlands operations and also include new and upgraded facilities at the Castle Bromwich plant and a new National Automotive Innovation Centre in Warwick.

Stuart Chamberlain, director of O'Brien Contractors, said: "Jaguar Land Rover is one of the most successful global businesses in the region and we are delighted to be chosen to deliver bulk earthworks, soil stabilisation and infrastructure works at two significant manufacturing and engineering facilities."

The new development at the i54 could be completed within two years – although exactly what it will be producing still remains a closely-guarded secret.

The single-storey building will be up to 11 metres high and built to match the existing £500m, 100,000sqm engine plant.

O'Brien, founded in 1958, will be cutting and filling around 140,000 cubic metres of material to form a plateau level for the new building. The work also involves lime/cement stabilising of 150,000 sqm of formation and subsequently importing 34,500 tons of sub-base material to cap the platform, with about 65,000 cubic metres of spoil being disposed off-site.

Mr Chamberlain added: "In recent times we have successfully completed £6m worth of work for Jaguar Land Rover at sites in Coventry, Gaydon, Birmingham and Solihull. The new contract wins are further evidence of our on-going commitment to using innovative new technologies allowing us to continually improve the quality of our work and the speed of installation, saving Jaguar Land Rover both time and money."

The company has previously delivered projects to customers including Nestle UK, Aston University and Wates.

If planning approval comes through, the work could start on the new development as soon as October and it is expected that it would take up to 18 months to complete the main building.

Around 500 construction jobs will be created by the project, with those in charge committed to ensuring that at least a quarter of those go to local people.

JLR is not giving details of workforce numbers and is refusing to say what it will actually build in the new factory.

It has said that an announcement on the use of the building will probably be made in the autumn, to coincide with the start of construction work.

The existing factory makes the four cylinder Ingenium diesel engines for new cars such as the Jaguar XE sports saloon and the Discovery Sport, as well as the upgraded XF saloon and the F-Pace crossover Jaguar due next year.

A third hall is currently being fitted out to assemble petrol engines, which are expected to go into production by the end of this year.

A small corridor will link the petrol engine assembly hall to the new factory, which could be used to make even more new engines, perhaps bigger six-cylinder versions of the Ingenium.

But it could also be used to make other major car components, such as gear boxes or parts of the drive-train that link the engine to the wheels.