Highways England adopts NEC4 for £1 billion trans-Pennine upgrade

NEC Users’ Group platinum member Highways England has adopted NEC4 contracts for the design and construction of a £1 billion upgrade to the A66 northern trans-Pennine route. It brings the government company’s NEC4 works pipeline to over £18 billion.

The latest project involves dualling the remaining 29 km of single-carriageway sections on the strategically important 80 km east–west route between the A1(M) motorway at Scotch Corner in North Yorkshire and the M6 motorway at Penrith in Cumbria.

PSC and ECC Option C

Following an official notice last October, a £45 million contract for preliminary design, construction technical advice and supervision will be let early in 2020 under an NEC4 Professional Service Contract (PSC). A preferred route announcement will be made early in Spring and, following final development consent, construction packages will be let using the NEC4 Engineering and Construction Contract (ECC) Option C (target contract with activity schedule) by 2025.

Senior project manager Matt Townsend said, ‘The A66 northern trans-Pennine project will be one of the biggest infrastructure investments ever delivered in the north of England and we want to attract and work with the best suppliers to help deliver and realise the benefits that dualling the remaining single sections of the A66 will bring.’

£18 bn of NEC4 contracts

The A66 upgrade will bring Highways England’s NEC4-based workload to around £18 billion. In 2018 it announced it was using NEC4 ECC for its new £9 billion, five-year framework for delivery of major motorway and A-road projects, and later that year it chose the NEC4 Alliance Contract (ALC) for £7 billion of smart motorways over the next 10 years.

In July last year the government company issued a construction contract notice for the £1.25 million upgrade of the A303 upgrade near Stonehenge. A spokesman said, ‘The majority of our contracts are based on NEC and, as a major user, the evolution of NEC3 to NEC4 makes the transition straightforward − a model contract document that can be adapted to reflect our needs.’