The agency plans to spend around £400m through the new arrangement over four years on support for the £11bn of capital investment in its Roads Improvement Strategy, announced in December 2014.

Firms selected will offer a mix of technical engineering advice, commercial services, dispute resolution advice, insurance advice, procurement advice and post-opening project evaluation.

SPaTS replaces previous routes available via T-TEAR, SPSF, PSF, and DRIP. This is an enabled framework and is available to the wider public sector.