Steve Rowsell, Crossrail

At an estimated outturn cost of £15.9 billion and a peak workforce of 14,000 people in four years time, Crossrail is Europe's largest construction project - and the biggest ever for NEC3. Work started in May 2009 and is due for completion in 2017.

The project includes 21 km of new twin-bore rail tunnels beneath London, eight new sub-surface stations, six shafts for ventilation, intervention and escape, the provision of all necessary railway systems and a mainline train fleet allowing 58 peak-period services along its 118 km route.

NEC3 contracts will be used to procure all central section works and systems requirements.

Why NEC3 was chosen

Crossrail's approach to procurement is aligned with the UK government's achieving excellence in construction principles, including a fair allocation of risk and reward, early involvement of the supply chain, minimising of interface risks, incentivising performance and the selection of suppliers on the basis of best value.

Following a review of available contracts and lessons learnt from recent major projects, Crossrail decided to use NEC3 for the following reasons

• it supports the desired culture and way of working

• it provides robust contract management processes

• it achieves a fair and sensible allocation of risk

• it can be used for all project requirements, which gives consistency in approach

• it is endorsed by the Office of Government Commerce and it is Transport for London's (TfL) contract of choice (Crossrail is a fully owned subsidiary of TfL)

• it sends a message of intent to the industry

• it is the contract most likely to achieve a successful outcome.

£1.35 billion contracts already let

Already in place are programme partner Transcend - a joint venture of Aecom, CH2M Hill and Nichols Group - which is engaged under a £100 million NEC3 Professional Service Contract (PSC), and project delivery partner Bechtel, similarly engaged under a PSC worth £400 million.

Design framework agreements totalling £300 million have been secured by 12 engineering consultancies along with enabling works framework agreements worth £350 million, all of which are based on the NEC3 Framework Contract. Secondary competitions are held for design and enabling works packages, with 20 design packages awarded so far.

Procurement of the main works contracts is also now underway, with tenders for the two main tunnelling contracts scheduled to be invited in November 2009. Both will be awarded by mid-2010 under the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract option C (target contract with activity schedule).

For further information contact Steve Rowsell on 0345 602 3813 or email steverowsell@crossrail.co.uk