The Highways Agency has come under fire for selecting Connect Plus - which includes two companies involved in the Metronet ‘fiasco’ - as its provisional preferred bidder for the £5BN M25 PFI contract.
Connect Plus was selected ahead of two other groups for the 30-year Design, Build, Finance and Operate (DBFO) contract.
The deal will involve widening more than 100km of the M25 from three to four lanes, as well as responsibility for maintaining the motorway and its structures over the 30-year period. The winning consortium comprises Balfour Beatty, Skanska, Atkins and Egis Projects.
But the Campaign for Better Transport and the Liberal Democrats have slammed the decision, given Balfour Beatty and Atkins are part of the Metronet consortium which went into administration in July 2007. Metronet Rail is responsible for maintaining two-thirds of London Underground’s infrastructure under a 30-year Public Private Partnership (PPP) contract.
Rebecca Lush Blum, roads and climate campaigner for the Campaign for Better Transport, said: ‘The selection of Connect Plus to run large sections of the M25 over 30 years demonstrates appalling judgement by the Highways Agency.
‘If these companies cannot run the tubes, how can we trust them to run the M25?’
Liberal Democrat shadow transport secretary, Norman Baker, added: ‘Ministers have clearly failed to learn the lessons of the Metronet fiasco. Let’s hope this project doesn’t end up wasting taxpayers’ money by turning into a similar disaster.’
But the HA said there were too many differences in the two contracts to draw comparisons. ‘The condition and knowledge of the assets on the M25 network are a “known quantity” – whereas on Metronet there was uncertainty of asset state and scope of the work. The M25 DBFO contract is also fixed price,’ the Agency said.
It added that Balfour Beatty and Atkins had successfully carried out a number of projects for the Agency, and it was ‘putting in place a number of measures in the contract’ to address the risk of similar failure.
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