Two maintenance and response contracts expected to be worth up to £262m and running for up to 15 years have been awarded to Kier Highways and a CH2M/Costain joint venture as part of Highways England’s new delivery arrangements. 

The contracts, which start in April 2017, will see Kier Highways operating in Cumbria and CH2M/Costain operating in the North East, delivering routine highway maintenance services, repairs to defects, emergency incident response and severe weather services on the Highways England road network.

Highways England is directly managing both routine maintenance and the delivery of capital renewal and improvement schemes.

This marks a change from previous way of working, bringing key functions in-house and taking greater control of the road network.

The first of these types of contracts began operation in the East Midland’s region in July this year.

Also two new five-year design services contracts, with an expected value of over £38m have today been awarded to Amey OW  for both the Cumbria and North Lancashire, and the North East areas.

David Poole, Executive Director for commercial and procurement at Highways England, said: “The awarding of these four new contracts builds on the new way of working already taking place in the East Midlands and is a real change in the way we have previously operated the network.

“Collaboration with our supply chain is key to our new way of working and we are looking forward to establishing a successful, long-term relationship with the appointed contractors.”

Further contracts will be awarded for specialist goods and services in the coming months and suppliers will be appointed to the new framework for delivering construction works in late January. 

The Asset Delivery maintenance and response, and design services contracts will commence in these areas when the current Managing Agent Contracts with A-one+ in the North East and Kier in Cumbria and North Lancashire come to an end.