After a competitive procurement process, West Sussex County Council has awarded two highways services contracts to provide maintenance and drainage works on the county’s road network in line with the council’s Highways Asset Management Policy and Strategy.
Having transitioned away from a single term maintenance contract model in 2020, this award confirms the authority’s continued belief that utilisation of a disaggregated delivery approach provides significant value advantages for both cost and quality.
The highways maintenance core services contract, which has been awarded to VolkerHighways Limited, has an estimated combined annual revenue and capital spend of £16.5million. The contract will cover a number of key areas of Local Highways Operations, including, repairs to emergency & reactive defect reports, winter treatment, maintenance of structures, minor carriageway patching, weed control, tree maintenance and maintenance of signs, lines and markings.
The highways drainage maintenance services contract has been awarded to FM Conway Limited and has an estimated combined annual revenue and capital spend of £4.2million to cover small scale reactive drainage and ironworks tasks, reactive system jetting and CCTV investigations, ditching maintenance works and cyclical cleansing of gullies.
While the success of the current contract for delivery of services has been clear, a range of alternative options have been reviewed as we evolve and improve our approach to delivering these services to drive value for money, growth in the local economy and network efficiency.
This procurement process has been aimed at affording greater flexibility and agility for both the Local Highway Operations team and contractor to respond and adapt to changing environments and funding programmes.
The council would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the hard work and services provided by the current contract holders Balfour Beatty LLP and Drainline over the contract period and as they facilitate the transition to the new providers in the coming months.
Both contracts will start on 1 April 2025, for an initial period of seven years.
(File picture – West Sussex CC)
