Network Rail announces trusted suppliers for Wales & Western upgrade

Credit: Network Rail

Network Rail has announced that AmcoGiffen, Octavius, BAM Nuttall, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, and Taylor Woodrow will be among their trusted suppliers involved in delivering Wales and Western region’s £2 billion programme of works over the next eight years.

The six contracts play a key part in a new way of working where Wales and Western region will work collaboratively with trusted suppliers over a longer term to deliver faster and more efficient projects, achieving greater value for money for the public purse. The contracts cover essential renewals to buildings and structures, like bridges, tunnels, culverts, and drainage, as well as supplying and maintaining electrification and plant.

The six contracts

Following industry, government and supplier feedback on best practice, Wales and Western have put in place contracts which will cover electrification and plant, stations, and buildings and civils renewals projects from 2024 to 2029 (Control Period 7) with options to extend to a maximum total of eight years.

The electrification and plant portfolio is extremely varied, covering major 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.

By packaging the work into one portfolio, Network Rail is 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. This new approach will enable Wales and Western and their suppliers to work much more collaboratively across a longer-term pipeline of work, enabling suppliers to better manage their own resources and supply chain, and help them deliver the right project solutions working closely with Network Rail.

In turn, Wales and Western is committed to working with suppliers to find new ways of working in line with the principles of the SPEED approach to project delivery, focusing on the right solutions at the right cost, delivering faster and more efficiently, and providing value for money for taxpayers. The longer-term collaboration and commercial focus will encourage this more effective contracting and help improve how Network Rail designs, plans, and develops projects to deliver better outcomes for passengers, freight and funders.

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.

“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,” Stuart Calvert, Capital Delivery Director for Network Rail’s Wales & Western region, said. “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.”