Largest ever highways procurement project

Wokingham Borough Council in Berkshire is using a single NEC contract for its largest ever highways procurement project.

Balfour Beatty, NEC Users’ Group gold member, will be delivering a programme of eight schemes which have a total worth of £24M, under NEC-based Scape National Civil Engineering and Infrastructure Framework. Work started in October 2017 and is set to take four years.

The major highways programme includes a Arborfield Cross Relief Road, South Wokingham Distributor Road (three projects), North Wokingham Distributor Road, Winnersh Relief Road Phase II, Lower Earley Way dualling and Barkham Bridge improvements. Along with three developer-led road schemes, these new and improved highways will enable the development of around 10,000 new homes, as well as schools and shops around the historic market town.

Balfour Beatty is engaged under NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract Option C (target contract with activity schedule). The council’s project manager, Ian Haller said: “The deployment of an NEC contract, with its inbuilt mechanisms for collaboration and project de-risking, is certainly helping us to deliver this ambitious scheme in a proactive partnership with Balfour Beatty”

Contract project director, Andy Bradshaw added that the council has let the programme on a two-stage basis, with an early contractor involvement stage followed by construction, he said: “The enabling works and design for each project were carried out during early contractor involvement, resulting in agreement on the prices and programmes for construction in stage two. This has saved the council over two years on the original procurement timeline.”

Mr Bradshaw also said the NEC’s flexibility has enabled both parties to de-risk the eight projects by carrying out time-sensitive actives like utility diversions and ecological activities during enabling works. He added that without any early contractor involvement, the risks may still be present during the normal construction phase. Meaning that programme risks are able to be mitigated across the portfolio of projects as priorities and can be altered to provide continuity of work when unforeseen events occur.

The contract director also added that separate pain/gain mechanisms operate at both the individual project ad overall programme level: “Any programme level benefit for the contractor comes from an incentive clause in respect of underspends on the client’s budget overall.”

With the project now well under way, Bradshaw said both parties remain focused and will continue to collaborate in order to deliver the works within the agreed budget and programme.

The commercial manager, Paul Barrington-Light says another benefit of the Scape framework is the opportunity to place back-to-back NEC3 Engineering and Construction Subcontracts (ECS) with a diverse supply chain.

He said: “NEC-based supplier frameworks are in place for eight key trades to provide continuity and consistency, as well as offering best value, across the project portfolio. We have let over 100 subcontractors to date. This also give the opportunity for some of our smaller suppliers to enhance their contractual knowledge of NEC.”

He also added that Scape also require the use of key performance indicators in order to improve customer and social value, and said that they are designed to encourage a wide range of activities that add value, which in other words means getting more for less. He said: “They are split into pre-construction-stage measures and construction-stage measures, with 52% relating to customer satisfaction and 33% relating to social value

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