Ringway wins £200m highways deal

Milton Keynes Council has named Ringway as preferred bidder for its highways, street lighting and network term service contract that could be worth up to £200 million.

The contract will see Ringway manage, maintain and improve highways related assets and the authority’s street lighting stock from spring 2014. The service will be for an initial period of seven years to 2021, with an option to extend this for up to a further three years.

In addition to undertaking all routine and cyclical highways maintenance, the contract also includes for highways safety inspections, the management of a vehicle workshop and the construction of schemes up to a value of £1 million, with the potential for schemes greater than £1m to also be ordered. The contract is estimated to be worth between £10-20m a year, dependent on the amount of additional scheme work undertaken.

Ringway will also advise on a £50m capital asset upgrade of the local network funded by Prudential Borrowing. This will be invested during the seven-year initial tenure of the contract as part of a 25-year asset management plan for Milton Keynes.

In addition to working collaboratively with Milton Keynes Council, the arrangement will also see Ringway strengthen its position on the Midlands Highway Alliance (MHA) term services community board which will be benchmarking performance across their range of term service contracts in order to deliver consistency and share best practice.

Jerry Pert, Ringway regional director, said: “Ringway has a long history of transferring public sector services to provide efficiencies and was able to demonstrate this to the council through the tender submission. We are now looking forward to working collaboratively with the council to deliver a first class maintenance service whilst we also support them as they embark on an ambitious investment programme.”