Thames Tideway names preferred bidders for tunnel construction

Three consortia of contractors who will be constructing the 25km Thames Tideway Tunnel have been named today as preferred bidders. Final contracts cannot be awarded until the summer when investors who will finance and deliver the project are announced.

Jackie Whitelaw
03 March 2015

Twitter FacebookLinkedIn

Print

Topics 

Thames Tideway Tunnel

The tunnel winners are:

BMB JV (Joint Venture of BAM Nuttall Ltd, Morgan Sindall Plc and Balfour Beatty Group Limited) for the West contract, from Acton Storm Tanks to Carnwath Road  largely in London Clay

FLO JV (Joint Venture of Ferrovial Agroman UK Ltd, Laing O’Rourke Construction) for the Central contract from Carnwath Road to Blackfriars Bridge in Thanet Sands and other groups and

CVB JV (Joint Venture of Costain, Vinci Construction Grands Projects, Bachy Soletanche) for the East contract from Blackfriars Bridge to Beckton in chalk.

“This is an opportunity to take the big learning and huge comfort from Crossrail along with the success of Thames Water’s Lee Tunnel project and the National Grid tunnelling work and bring it all to bear on the next major investment in London in a harmonious way" - Andy Mitchell

This is the hottest ticket in town for the tunnel teams who are winding down from Crossrail and the Lee Tunnel as their tunnelling works complete. The intention is that they take their skilled teams and experience and move production up a gear to demonstrate to the government that properly planned infrastructure programmes will deliver cost efficiencies for the country.

“This is an opportunity to take the big learning and huge comfort from Crossrail along with the success of Thames Water’s Lee Tunnel project and the National Grid tunnelling work and bring it all to bear on the next major investment in London in a harmonious way,” Thames Tideway Tunnel chief executive Andy Mitchell told Infrastructure Intelligence in January.

"It’s not just about continuing to deliver the programme, it’s about real incremental cost efficiency. It should no longer be a surprise that we can build it at cost. What is important is for everyone in the infrastructure sector to demonstrate improvement. And that’s the thrust of the contracting approach on Tideway. What we will see is pure incremental tunnelling figures better than ever before." 

Mitchell explained to Infrastructure Intelligence how the contracts would work.

"We will be running an alliance arrangement with pain and gain triggers for the whole alliance which includes us, Thames Water, the three main contractors and the SCADA systems integrator," he said.

“For the winning contractors, what that means is that there will be opportunity in the six month optimised contractor involvement period after award of contracts to work out how we could do things better by changing elements of the design and by using the alliance framework.

“For instance, all the contractors are looking at marine shipment of tunnelling segments and muck away. Does that mean we require three separate logistics management plans on the river? That can’t make sense. “You could say the same about the design detailing for the shafts. They all have to achieve the same dissipation so do we need three different designs? We can’t do. This is not for us to impose but there must be synergies. It is going to be interesting to see them develop.”

“For the winning contractors, what that means is that there will be opportunity in the six month optimised contractor involvement period after award of contracts to work out how we could do things better by changing elements of the design and by using the alliance framework" - Andy Mitchell

Over 9000 jobs are expected to be created by construction of the scheme which is intended to protect the Thames from increasing sewage pollution. The tunnel will be between 6.5m and 7.2m in diameter – equivalent to three London buses side by side and will fall from 35m deep in west London to 65m in east London.

“We have selected our preferred bidders to work on the three main works packages because we have absolute faith in their ability to carry out these major pieces of work safely, considerately and sustainably and we are looking forward to working with them to offer the thousands of jobs that will help make this project a reality,” Mitchell said.

“This is not just an engineering project, this is about reconnecting London with its river by cleaning it up and making it something that is integral to our city, for the growing population, thriving businesses and to increase leisure uses. This is a unique opportunity to be involved in improving London’s environment and economy and we’re very excited for what the future holds,” he added.

The full list of contracting teams bidding for the job was as follows:

West


Bam Nuttall, Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall JV
- winner

Costain, Vinci, Bachy JV


Dragados, Samsung JV


Ferrovial Agroman, Laing O’Rourke JV

Central


Bam Nuttall, Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall JV


Costain, Vinci, Bachy JV


Ferrovial Agroman, Laing O’Rourke JV
- winner

Skanska, Bilfinger, Razel Bec JV

East


Bam Nuttall, Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall JV


Bechtel, Strabag JV


Bouygues Travaux Publics


Costain, Vinci, Bachy JV
- winner 

Hochtief, Murphy JV

Read the full Infrastructure Intelligence interview with Andy Mitchell  - 2015 to be Thames Tideway’s year says project CEO Andy Mitchell