Council launches £280m highways tender
Liverpool City Council is looking for contractors to work on a four-year highways framework worth up to £280 million.
The framework – one of four bespoke platforms the council is creating to invest in roads and new homes – is divided into three lots with projects ranging from £250,000 to £12m for planned highways works including patching and potholes, ground investigation, piling, remedial works, trail pits, bridges and tunnels.
There will be 12 places in total on the framework, across the 3 lots, with up to 24 suppliers invited to tender, after the Mayor of Liverpool announced a new phase of highways investment in the summer.
Interested parties must complete the Selection Questionnaire by Wednesday, 17 October – which can be found at the Pro Contract website, which is free for businesses to sign up to.
The new roads frameworks have been designed specifically for the city council to deliver its Better Roads programme – with a focus on enabling Liverpool and Merseyside based contractors the opportunity to pitch for council contracts, bolstering the local supply chain.
Further procurement frameworks are also being designed to assist Foundations – the new ethical housing company established by the council to create 10,000 new homes and to refurbish dilapidated housing stock in the city. Foundations will also be given stiff targets to bolster apprenticeships in the region's construction sector. The frameworks can also can be utilised by other local bodies to contract works.
Liverpool City Council is currently overseeing 185 on-site development schemes worth a record £3bn, including the council's own £1bn Paddington Village scheme and new cruise liner facility, and the Mayor of Liverpool has said the authority's focus must be on taking a more pro-active role in stimulating the city's economy.
Mayor Anderson added: "Liverpool's roads are in need of a dramatic overhaul.
"Collective appeals to government have largely fallen on deaf ears so we need to try something new and radical which tackles this issue and at the same time has a positive impact on the local economy.
"The funding for the roads is in place and Foundations has now been established so the time has now come to fine tune the plans and start delivering.
"To do this, and to make it easier for Liverpool companies to navigate our tendering process, the council's procurement team has created our first bespoke frameworks.
"This a watershed moment for the council and symbolises the effort and commitment the entire organisation is undertaking to change the way we operate to be more business friendly so together the public and private sector can make a real difference to the future of the city."
The Better Roads programme, which began in 2014, has seen over one hundred roads upgraded so far including the recent completion of a £1.6m upgrade to Park Lane as part of creating a continuous cycle route from Toxteth to the Baltic Triangle, connecting to Otterspool, the ongoing construction of a new dual carriageway to benefit the development of the city's north docks with the contract for a link road for the Isle of Man ferry terminal to be approved this Friday.