Weekly round-up

Costain/Vinci win £750M M4 upgrade, Crossrail 2 route safeguarded, Thomson takes over from Venables at ADA, and Queen's Speech set for 27 May.

Jackie Whitelaw
27 March 2015

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1. The Welsh Government has awarded Costain/VINCI Joint Venture (represented by Taylor Woodrow and VINCI Construction Grands Projets), the first stage of an ECI contract for the M4 Corridor to the south of Newport. This new 24 km long section of motorway includes a 2.5 km long cablemstayed viaduct above the river Usk, two key interchanges and 36 structures. Price of the project is £750M. 

2. Former RAC Foundation director Stephen Glaister has joined the board of the newly named Office of Rail and Road which will monitor performance of the rail industry and newly formed Highways England. ORR has launched a public consultation setting out its proposed approach to a new monitoring regime to track Highways England’s performance in delivering its major roads investment programme. The consultation also sets out ORR’s strategic objective on securing improved performance and value for money from the strategic road network, and explains how ORR will hold Highways England to account. ORR is seeking comments from all interested parties by 19 June.

3. Government has announced safeguarding of the route of Crossrail 2 which would run between south west and north east London. Department for Transport is working with Transport for London and Network Rail on a business case, after the Chancellor made £2 million available to support this work. The safeguarded route runs from Wimbledon to Southgate and Tottenham Hale.

4. Tony Douglas, the current CEO of Abu Dhabi Airports and former managing director of T5 construction, is to replace Bernard Gray as the boss of Britain's £14bn a year Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organisation, the Ministry of Defence has announced. DE&S is part way through a major transformation in an effort to improve performance.The organisation, which employs about 12,000 people, became a trading entity within the MoD last year. Gray recently appointed teams from Bechtel and CH2M Hill to provide project and other expertise to the procurement body.

5. The UK fracking industry needs a new regulator to moniter fracking sites and give the public more confidence in the sector the independent Task Force on Shale Gas has said.

6. Councils across England are to receive a share of £275M million for major local roads maintenance from the  DfT’s  Challenge Fund. The Challenge Fund is for one-off major infrastructure schemes. The 31 schemes which have won funding in 28 local authorities include safety repairs, bridge renewal, carriageway and drainage improvements, as well as upgrading street lighting in a number of areas to bring them in line with modern standards.The money announced today is part of the £6 billion funding for local road maintenance announced in December 2014.

7. Innes Thomson takes over as chief executive of the Association of Drainage Authorities on 1st April, replacing Jean Venables who was 10 years at the helm. He is committed to continuing Venables’ work in building public and political awareness of the critical work performed by drainage authorities and enhancing the reputation of the Internal Drainage Boards. In particular he wants to highlight the  essential work they do to manage water levels and drainage across the low-lying land areas, where much of the country’s electricity generation takes place and significant transport links are situated.  “Many people simply do not realise the breadth of work that almost 600 dedicated people do across the country to carefully control water in our precious and fertile lowland areas which in turn also helps to manage and alleviate water movement and levels in our more urban settlements “ Thomson said.

8. Parliament has been prorogued and will automatically dissolve on 30 March under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The Prime Minister will ask Her Majesty to summon the new Parliament to meet on Monday 18 May, when the business will be the election of the Speaker and the swearing-in of members. The State Opening of Parliament will follow on Wednesday 27 May.

9. Phil Verster has been announced as managing director of the Abellio ScotRail/Network Rail Alliance. Verster is currently Phil is currently route managing director of Network Rail's second largest route  - London North East (which includes the East Coast Main Line between London and Scotland).

10. Scottish Power is to close its  coal-fired power station at Longannet in Fife early next year. The decision follows the energy firm's failure to win a deal with National Grid. The SSE gas-fired plant at Peterhead won the contract instead.