Tuesday 17 Dec 2013
Network Rail awards £1.2bn infrastructure deals to boost rail in London & south east
- Region & Route:
- National
Network Rail has kickstarted its infrastructure investment plans for London and the south east for the next five years by nominating four preferred suppliers for contracts worth a total of £1.2bn.
The framework agreements, which will come into force on 1 April 2014, will cover almost half Network Rail’s £2.5bn workbank for the 2014-19 funding period in the region, delivering longer platforms for longer trains on key commuter routes, station enhancements, new footbridges to improve accessibility and upgrades to bridges, embankments and tunnels to increase the resilience of the infrastructure in some of the most intensely-used parts of Britain’s rail network.
VolkerFitzpatrick, Costain, BAM Nuttall and Geoffrey Osborne are the four suppliers who will work with Network Rail’s regional infrastructure projects business to build a bigger, better railway on the Anglia, Kent, Sussex and Wessex routes.
Nick Elliott, southern regional director for infrastructure projects, Network Rail, said: “The number of people travelling by rail has more than doubled in the last decade and is predicted to grow by a further 400m by 2020.
“To help meet this growth in demand, our plans for the next five years will help deliver a 20% increase in the number of seats into London at the busiest times of day. We’ll do this not only through big, high-profile schemes, but also by targeted investment to lengthen platforms, improve stations, increase accessibility and make our infrastructure more reliable across London and the south east.
“I look forward to working with our suppliers to build a bigger, better railway for passengers in and around the capital and to help support the region’s economic growth.”
The frameworks agreements have been designed to encourage increased collaboration between Network Rail and its partners, and will incorporate shared objectives to enable both sides to share in risk and reward and to incentivise safe, efficient project delivery. Safety accounted for 15% of the evaluation criteria for suppliers, which is a significant increase on previous frameworks and highlights Network Rail’s commitment to improving workforce safety.
Nick Elliott continued: “Safety is at the heart of everything we do, so it is right that we reflect that in the way we choose our supply partners. This represents a significant change to the way we assess safety and underlines our commitment to delivering a fundamental improvement in workforce safety within the rail industry.”
Notes to editors
The four framework agreements have an agreed minimum contract value and cover enhancements, buildings and civils work on Network Rail’s Anglia, Kent, Sussex and Wessex routes. They will be in place for the duration of control period five, which runs from 1 April 2014- to 31 March 2019.
The four nominated bidders have each been allocated to work alongside one of the four Network Rail routes in the south of England:
- Anglia – Volker Fitzpatrick Ltd
- Kent – Costain Ltd
- Sussex – BAM Nuttall Ltd
- Wessex – Geoffrey Osborne Ltd
The client for these agreements is Network Rail Infrastructure Projects South, one of four regionally-based business units within Network Rail tasked with delivering capital expenditure projects to improve the railway. This regional structure was put in place in 2011 as part of Network Rail’s devolution agenda, in order to encourage competition, innovation and closer partnerships with suppliers to deliver projects more competitively and efficiently.
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We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
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