Highways England is incentivising contractors to manage roadworks better, buy more services locally and encourage innovation through a new approach to procure up to £8.7Bn of work on the strategic road network.
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Deals have been announced with 13 supply chain partners to collaborate regionally in eight ‘lots’ of work in an approach called the Routes to Market Regional Delivery Partnership. Selected companies will design, develop and construct projects under the new arrangement from next year until 2024. Until now Highways England has procured work on a scheme by scheme basis.
Jim O’Sullivan, Chief executive, Highways England described the new framework as “hugely significant” and explained the reason for the new approach. Speaking to TP Weekly News, he said: “Contractors told us that bidding is very expensive and an awful lot of effort goes into it without much success. The second problem with awarding everything on a bid is that it all comes down to price.
“This new framework is based on performance, so when we come to award the next piece of work it comes down to how did you perform on the last contract in terms of safety, quality, how communities found it and the experience of motorists. The next question is ‘What are you going to do to improve on your next project?’.”
Work is allocated as follows:
The values mentioned are shared between suppliers on the lot over a six year period (includes RIS1 budget and RIS2 estimate. Work is arranged into 18 packages of schemes, awarded to Delivery Integration Partners in bands of up to £100M (lots 1 to 3) and over £100M (lots 4 to 8).
Photograph: Highways England
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