The move comes a few months after its main supplier Vital Services collapsed into administration.
The business was quickly sold to the Morson Group along with labour contracts covering 2,000 workers avoiding threatened widespread disruption within the railway workforce.
Now Network Rail looks to be reducing its reliance on a few main suppliers and is breaking up the country into up to 10 contracting regions.
It aims to hold a bidders day next month to set out the details of its new labour strategy with interested firms (see below).
According to the prequalification document, the work will be broken down into five lots of expertise. This will cover: core contingent labour; Signalling & Telecomms; Electrification and Plant; Protection; and Welding & Grinding.
Network Rail expects up to 30 firms to bid for a place on the five-year framework.
Because the labour will be used to top up existing needs, the estimated spend over the period ranges from £350m to £1.65bn.
Network Rail and its main contractors still rely heavily on labour supply agreements with an estimated 5,000 engineers and workers supplied on an agency basis.
The move comes at a time when the Inland Revenue is planning a big shake-up in taxation for agency labour.
Prequal procedure
To receive PQQ email: [email protected]
The email header should be: PQQ Request (YOUR COMPANY NAME)
A copy of the PQQ will then be issued to the email address the request is received from within a maximum of 2 business days.
The closing date for returning the PQQ is 21.2.2014 at 18.00.
A Supplier briefing session will be held on 7.2.2014, in Euston Station, London, from 09.30-12.30 if Suppliers wish to attend. This session will detail the high-level strategy, include a Safety update and discuss the PQQ.
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