Highways Agency managing agent contractor A-one+ has been awarded a two year extension to its Area 7 deal which covers the East Midlands. Area 7 was expected to be retendered soon as one of the agency’s new Asset Support Contracts.

Original expiry date for the MAC deal was June 2014 but the arrangement will now continue until 2016 to allow the agency to “test some new ideas and approaches”.

ASC tenders for Areas 6, 3 and 8 are currently being assessed by the HA. Two have been let in Areas 2 and 10.

A Highways Agency spokesperson said: “We have decided to take advantage of the option to extend our contract for maintenance in Area 7 with the current provider A-one+. This will enable us to develop and test some new ideas and approaches as part of our drive to continually review and improve our maintenance activities, achieving even greater efficiencies from maintenance activities carried out on England's motorways and major "A" roads, and to help inform future contracts.

“Area 7 gives us a good mix of routes for trial work. In order to be able to evaluate these trials appropriately, we are using an area with a provider which is already well embedded rather than one of the new ASC providers.”

A-one+ is a joint venture of Costain, Colas and Halcrow.

Details of the contract remain commercially confidential, but the HA said it had already worked closely with A-one+ to deliver substantial savings as part of the retrofit of ASC conditions to existing MAC contracts.

The HA is expecting to reduce its routine maintenance costs by 25% using the new ASC arrangements. The agency is refining its approach deal by deal by learning the lessons from the award of the initial contracts. ASC contractors are also beginning to be able to tap into other procurement innovations like category management frameworks. So far there are a number of category management partners for pavement, traffic technology and gantries which can be called in by ASC contractors.

HA procurement director David Poole and programme director for the ASC contracts Graham Bowskill explain how the contracts are developing in the new edition of Transportation Professional.

(Photo: Highways Agency)

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