Mouchel subsidiary EM Highway Services has been awarded an Asset Support Contract (ASC) by the Highways Agency for road maintenance and improvements in an area covering much of central England.
The five year deal which is worth a potential £1.2Bn, is for the HA’s Area 9, which includes 450 miles of major roads near Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Stoke-on-Trent across eight counties including Herefordshire, Warwickshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire, as well as parts of Gloucestershire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire. The motorways involved are sections of the M50, M5, M6, M42, M40, M54, and M69 as well as parts of the A5, A38, A46, A49, and A38 (M),
The contract is EM Highway Service’s second ASC for the HA and will start in July for five years until 2019, with a possible three year extension. Annual spending will be up to £160 million a year and it is anticipated the contract will create a large number of highways jobs.
EM Highway Services won its first Asset Support Contract with the HA in 2013, for Area 3 where it had been working as a Managing Agent Contractor (MAC) for five years. The company has also been Managing Agent Contractor for Area 13 since 2010 and was also the successful incumbent for reletting the Area 1 MAC in 2010.
The new ASC’s are intended to drive efficiencies across the strategic road network, with a target of 25% cost savings over the five years to 2015. A key difference with the new approach is that it allows contractors to devise their own solutions to deliver outcomes determined under the contract.
EM Managing Director Dave Wright said the company aimed to make Area 9 and Area 3 ‘the leading examples of how a successful contract of this type should perform’.
HA Midlands region Divisional Director Tim Harbot said: “By specifying the outcomes required for a safe and well maintained road network, and giving suppliers greater freedom to innovate to achieve those outcomes, ASC’s incentivise our supply chain to deliver results for road users, and will achieve significant cost savings too.”
