Highways England signposts £2bn splurge on tech frameworks

Infrastructure body will unfurl formal contract notice in December

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Highways England intends to splurge nearly £2bn on IT and other tech services as part of its road investment strategy (RIS).

The infrastructure body signposted the pair of frameworks in a prior information notice to the market and intend for them to be "be vehicles to support the delivery of Highways England's RIS2 technology pipeline and to meet the strategic aims of Highways England".

The Information Technology Commercial Framework (ITCF) is comprised of four lots and is valued at a cool £1bn over four years, with the option to extend a further two years.

The ITCF Lots span IT hardware, software and services.

Lot 1 is for services and solutions, Lot 2 is seeking technical specialist services, Lot 3 is for professional services and Lot 4 is for IT products and managed services.

It runs alongside the operational technology commercial framework (OTCF) which is valued at £950m and also spans four years. It is intended to "deliver projects and services which enable Highways England to operate and monitor the Strategic Road Network. These include support across the design, implementation and commissioning lifecycle of operational technology".

The OCTF is seeking suppliers who can deliver, among other services, traffic-control equipment, car park control equipment, biometric sensors, software package and information systems and parking meters.

Highways England is working with Crown Commercial Services for both frameworks. The formal contract notices are expected to go out on the 11 December this year and contract awards are expected to go out between June and August 2021.

In its Contracts Pipeline 2020 pamphlet, Highways England vowed to deliver value for money in its contracts,

"Our contracts pipeline will be used to measure and communicate progress and value for money. It will deliver benefits to our customers by improving safety, reducing disruption, delivering smoother traffic flow and increasing reliability," it stated.