The chosen five are: AmcoGiffen, Bam Nuttall, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Octavius (formerly Osborne Infrastructure) and Vinci subsidiary Taylor Woodrow.

The contracts cover essential renewals to buildings and structures, like bridges, tunnels and drainage, as well as supplying and maintaining electrification and plant across Network Rail Wales & Western region.

The electrification and plant portfolio covers overhead line interventions to new points heaters, and all the plant at the Severn Tunnel pumping station. The stations work streams includes new stations at North Filton and Henbury in Bristol, Wellington and Cullompton in Devon, and Charfield in South Gloucestershire. 

Each contractor has a different scope of work:

– AmcoGiffen has two contracts: Wales and western electrification and plant, and Wales and Borders structures.

– Bam Nuttall has Wales and Borders geotechnical and off-track drainage work.

– Morgan Sindall Infrastructure will take care of western structures including maintenance and renewals of assets such as bridges, tunnels, walls and culverts.

– Octavius has Wales and western stations and buildings work, covering maintenance and renewals of canopies, buildings, depots, platform structures, car parks and subways.

– Taylor Woodrow has western geotechnical and off-track drainage work.

These contracts form part of Wales and Western’s overall programme to develop long term supply relationships, like that already in place with our South Rail System Alliance (Colas and Aecom), and will be followed by similar contracts for signalling later in 2023. 

By packaging the work into one portfolio, Network Rail said it was expecting “efficiencies in time and cost through best use of resources, consistency, continual improvement as well as better coordinated access to the railway and a focus on innovative solutions”. 

The thinking is that suppliers will work more collaboratively across a longer-term pipeline of work. 

Stuart Calvert, capital delivery director for Network Rail’s Wales & Western region, said: “We have made real progress in transforming the delivery of our investment projects, reducing the time and cost of our work, as we saw with completion of the Dartmoor Line to Okehampton.  

“We’re taking this same approach to our renewals, and it’s very important that we select excellent suppliers and work collaboratively to get the same sort of benefits which will ultimately support better service for our passengers and freight customers. I’m very excited with these new contracts and look forward to developing the portfolio of works with them.” 

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