The runway work is no small undertaking. By way of comparison Exeter resurfaced their runway last winter over a five month period November-March. They achieved it with only night closures of the runway at weekends. So the SEN work will undoubtedly impact on operations, though to what extent remains to be seen. Clearly Stobart cannot afford a repeat of the CAX fiasco with RYR expecting to start SEN operations on April 2.
I would be surprised if they took on the RW05 loop at this stage. They don't have planning permission for it yet and that alone may take time they don't have. I would have thought it could only be a distraction to the time critical resurfacing task though one can see the advantages of getting the job done when the equipment is already on site and the runway closed.