By Thomas Johnson
Kent County Council is searching for a contractor for a new £2bn highways maintenance contract that is expected to last for up to 21 years.
Kent’s local road network is one of the largest in the country, with around 8,750km of roads. This includes: 990km of A roads, 450km of B roads, 1,880km of C roads and 5,430km of unclassified roads.
The council’s current highway term maintenance services contract expires on 30 April 2026. Kent County Council is aiming to enter into the new contract by November next year to allow sufficient time for implementation and ensure service continuity from the expiry of the current contract.
It intends to invite the top four scoring candidates from the selection stage to participate in an introductory meeting and submit an initial tender, reported Construction News‘ sister magazine New Civil Engineer. At the initial tender stage, the council will further shortlist three tenderers.
The three shortlisted tenderers will be invited to discuss and negotiate a draft contract, leases and scope. They will also be offered the opportunity to provide a mark-up of those documents as part of the detailed tender stage.
Current plans for the contract would see it last 14 years with the option to extend for a further seven years.
The current contract delivers essential and statutory services that will also apply to the new contract, including:
- Drainage maintenance and capital projects.
- Bridge repairs, tunnel maintenance and management, and construction of new structures.
- Highway patching and small to medium-scale road asset renewal works, e.g. pothole repairs and larger surface defect repairs of the highway.
- Pavement asset preservation services, e.g. carriageway and footway life extension treatments such as surface dressing.
- Emergency response, e.g. responding to emergencies across the network due to weather, emergency services support, vehicle collisions and structural asset failure both in hours and out of hours.
- Highway improvement scheme delivery, e.g. construction of schemes for crash remedial measures, engineering and traffic schemes.
The winning contractor will also be expected to take part in routine maintenance, highways schemes, structures and tunnels maintenance, and high speed road maintenance programmes.
The council anticipates the winning contractor will provide all the fleet for the services. However, it is exploring the option of either buying or leasing the gritting fleet and buying the gritting salt directly.
Those wishing to submit expressions of interest have until 12pm on 25 November to do so. Winning bidders can expect to hear back by the 9 December.
