Construction & Rail Updates

An update on the Construction and Rail industries after another busy week:

The new Crossrail £15bn east-west railway line being built under London has been named the Elizabeth Line, in honour of HM The Queen, who visited the project this week. The line is due to open in 2018 and will link parts of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire to Essex.

BAM Nuttall secured the deck refurbishment contract for Tower Bridge. The programme of work will be the most intensive undertaken on the bridge since 1962 and is likely to involve the replacement of substrates beneath the running surface of the deck, carry out steel repairs to the bascules and waterproofing to the approaches. Once the design has been approved by London City Corporation it is anticipated that the construction work will commence in October 2016 with a view to completing the programme by the year-end.

The first picture of the six £1.5bn skyscrapers set to transform the skyline when they replace the Met’s world-famous headquarters was revealed. The striking towers of between 14 and 20 storeys planned for New Scotland Yard will be visible from Buckingham Palace, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament.

AECOM has been appointed lead designer for the Fusion joint venture, which is bidding for work on the HS2 rail project. Fusion is an Anglo-Dutch-Spanish combination of Morgan Sindall, BAM, and Ferrovial. The joint venture has formed primarily to bid for civil contracts on HS2, including enabling works, surface route, viaducts, and tunnels.

Essential Living won £100m North London build-to-rent tower scheme by the Department for Communities and Local Government. The scheme is to build a 24-storey block of flats in Swiss Cottage. The current 1980s building on the site, which was one of the first to be diagnosed with sick building syndrome, will be demolished to make way for the Theatre Square development.

Department of Health procurement has started a bid race to secure a place on the successor framework to ProCure 21+. The existing framework is due to end in September and will be replaced by ProCure 22, which could see a spend of up to £4bn over four years. Existing framework partners Balfour Beatty, Galliford Try hps, Integrated Health Projects, Interserve, Kier and Willmott Dixon are expected to fight to renew.

The Environment Agency has gone out to tender with a contract for the provision of a flood and coastal engineering higher education programme. The new contract will run for five and a half years in total with an option to extend for a further 2 years. The tender is divided into 2 lots – Lot A — FdSc & BSc and Lot B — MSc – suppliers are being invited to bid for either or both lots. Estimate value of the contract is between £2m and £4m. The time limit for receipt of requests for documents or for accessing documents is 1^st April 2016.

Scottish Water announced the appointment of two joint ventures (Atkins and RPS ARC jv and MWH and Mott MacDonald’s jv m2) to provide technical consultancy support in the 2015-2021 investment programme. The contract is worth £120m over six years divided between the two ventures, with an option for Scottish Water to extend the agreement to 2027.

VolkerFitzpatrick won the £12m London Royal Mail job to design and build a new delivery office and vehicle workshop in Nine Elms, London following a competitive two-stage tender.

Also this week Sweett Group became the first company to be sentenced for bribery over corrupt payments it made to a member of the investment board of Al Ain Ahlia Insurance Company to secure work on a luxury hotel project in Dubai. Sweett Group received a fine of £1.4m and an £851k confiscation order at Southwark Crown Court after it admitted that it had failed to prevent the bribery.

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