Three shortlisted for £300m Scottish Borders Railway

Three teams are left in the running for the main construction contract on the £300m Scottish Borders Railway.

Transport Scotland said that the three organisations invited to tender are: BAM; IMCD (Sir Robert McAlpine, Iridium Concesiones de Infrastructuras SA, Carillion Construction); and New Borders Railway (Fluor, Miller Construction, Uberior Infrastructure Investments).

The design and build contract is worth around £230m at 2013 prices. Other costs associated with the project include land purchase and advance ancillary works which began in March.

The new railway line will be designed, built and financed and maintained by a newly created, Transport Scotland-backed non-profit company, using a non-profit distributing procurement model.

John Swinney, cabinet secretary for finance & sustainable growth said: “This milestone takes us another step closer to providing timetabled passenger train services to communities along the route for the first time in over 40 years.”

In January, Transport Scotland held a bidders day, attended by over 55 UK and European companies, which resulted in formal expressions of interest from five bidders.

These five, comprising a total of 12 construction and financial companies, submitted pre-qualification questionnaires in March 2010.

The shortlisted organisations will now be invited to participate in competitive dialogue, the next stage of procurement, to discuss their proposals for delivering the railway and associated infrastructure. During this process, the three organisations will be reduced to two, who will then be invited to submit a final tender.

It is anticipated that the award of the contract for Borders Railway will be made in winter 2011 when construction work will start on site.

The project is estimated for completion with train services running in 2014.

All the necessary land has been acquired to allow construction of the railway. Accelerated funding was made available last year to allow advanced works to be completed early to reduce the level of risk in the main works contract.

The Utilities work which began in March 2010 ‘triggered’ the Waverley Railway (Scotland) Act 2006 states that once work has begun the railway must be finished in its entirety from Edinburgh to Tweedbank.

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