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Highways England selected 13 contractors in November 2018 to take on £8.7bn of highways work over the next six years. The partnership is structured into a series of regional frameworks, with two or three contractors selected for each of the eight highways regions in England.
Highways England calls these contractors its delivery integration partners, or DIPs
First up is a £61.4m contract for Geoffrey Osborne to remove a bottleneck on the A46 in Coventry and a £52.4m contract for VolkerFitzpatrick to make improvements along the A27 near Lewes in East Sussex.
Osborne’s contract involves upgrading the Binley junction on the A46. The A46 dual carriageway at Binley will become a flyover that will separate local traffic from using the A46. Construction will begin in spring 2020 and is expected to be completed by spring 2022.
VolkerFitzpatrick will upgrade junctions along a nine-mile section of the A27 between Lewes and Polegate and create a new dual carriageway on a short section west of Polegate. This work is also expected to start in spring 2020.
The Routes to Market Regional Delivery Partnership contains incentives for results which include:
- shorter duration and more accurate management of roadworks to make journey times more predicatble for drivers
- buying more efficiently and buying locally
- encouraging innovation, for example lighting and signs designed to need less maintenance, reducing disruption and improving road worker safety
- reduced road noise and increased environmental benefits.
Highways England major projects executive director Peter Mumford said: “I am delighted to announce the signing of these contracts, which mark the first of many more to come as part of the Regional Delivery Partnership. These are the first of 13 companies that will be working with us to deliver these important road projects, safely, with our customers in mind and to the delivery plan. To achieve this we have worked hard to create alignment between Highways England and its supply chain, focusing on the behaviours that support us to achieve our shared goals.
“This is clear evidence that new ways of working are being embraced by the market, which is now seizing the opportunity to work in a more collaborative way with Highways England, representing a fundamental change in the way we deliver our road projects.”
As previously reported, the full list of DIPs is:
Lot 1 – Southwest & Midlands (worth £200m over the full term): Geoffrey Osborne; and Griffiths / Farrans Joint Venture
Lot 2 – Southeast & East (£350m): John Graham Construction; and Volker Fitzpatrick
Lot 3 – Northwest, Northeast, Yorkshire & Humber (£200m): Amey Sir Robert McAlpine Joint Venture; and North Midland Construction
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Lot 4 – South West (£800m): Galliford Try Infrastructure; and Taylor Woodrow (Vinci)
Lot 5 – Midlands (£1250m): BAM Nuttall; and Skanska Construction UK
Lot 6 – Southeast (£1,100m): BAM Nuttall; and Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering
Lot 7 – East (£2,800m): Costain; Galliford Try Infrastructure; and Skanska Construction UK
Lot 8 – Northwest, Northeast, Yorkshire & Humber (£2,000m): Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering; Costain; and Kier Highways.
Balfour Beatty says that the initial packages of work it has secured through its two lots are worth a total of £425m.
North Midland Construction's first scheme is an upgrade to the M621 in Leeds.
Costain says it expects to bag £1.5bn of work over the six-year period of the framework, with three schemes on the A1 and one on the A12 in Chelmsford.
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