O'Hara Bros Surfacing starts work on July 1 on a new highways term maintenance contract for the London Borough of Hillingdon that could be worth more than £170m if extended based on performance.
The original deal is valued at £99.4m over seven years and will expire in June 2033, but the contract includes the potential for extensions valued at £14.2m a year that would add another £71m.
The Harrow-based contractor beat bids from JB Riney, J McCann and Connor Construction (South West) to hang onto the job with Hillingdon, where O'Hara has been working since 2014.
O'Hara's last deal was extended in 2024 for an extra two years, at an estimated cost of £20m to the council, and procurement of the new deal began last year with tenders returned in September.
The extension ended in March, when the new contract was originally due to begin, but a further three months were added, allowing O'Hara to stay in place until July.
The new contract will cover routine and reactive term service works, including cyclical drain and gully cleansing and planned ditch clearing, plus reactive maintenance such as pothole repairs, footway defects, street furniture, along with installation of new domestic and heavy vehicle crossovers.
Hillingdon borough has a significant in-house highways capacity. In 2022, council meeting notes show that roughly 85% of regular highway maintenance works were by the Council's operatives - the balance, comprising larger scale works, was issued to O'Hara.
