National Highways has offered Colas an eight-year contract to refurbrish and upkeep the West Midlands roads. The contract costing £328M will see the civil engineering company maintain and revamp the Area 9 road network, the biggest National Highways area comprising of Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Shropshire and part of North Gloucestershire. The total project sums up to around 3,760km of motorways and trunk roads.
Earlier in 2014, a five-year maintenance tender for the Area 9 was awarded to Mouchel but was acquired by Kier in 2015. The contract agreement with Kier was later extended for three more years from 2019 to 2022. Colas will assume the duties from 1 July 2022. The £328M value, being an agreement set for eight-year is much lower than the £600M awarded for five years in 2014. This shows how National Highways has restructured its approach, as it now directly handles its asset management more often in preference to working through the contractor.
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Working towards the common goal of lowering carbon emissions.
Andrew Jinks, the regional operations director for Midlands stated: “Our roads are among the world’s safest and this kind of partnerships will help to maintain the high standards that we put ourselves and our partners. By working much closer with the supply chain partners on repairs, routine maintenance and incident response, we’re able to perform more expeditiously, identifying innovative ways of working and offering the best possible quality of service to the road users. “We’re excited that Colas has been awarded the West Midlands contract and anticipate to partnering with them to drive improvement and strengthen our regional expertise.”
Carl Fergusson, the Colas chief executive added: “Everyone at Colas is happy that we are continuing to grow on our victorious relationship with National Highways with this new, important, contract award. We are anticipating to establishing a highly efficacious collaborative working relationship with National Highways in Area 9 and our supply chain partners being part of the contract, and in toiling towards the common goal of lowering carbon emissions to achieve net zero.”
