Southern Water opens £700M capital infrastructure framework opportunity for AMP8

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The water company says that AMP8 will be “the largest investment programme it has ever undertaken”. Southern Water’s current frameworks for engineering, design and construction are expiring at the end of AMP7, on 31 March 2025, and it is now looking for a complete refresh. It says that it is “seeking to build on positive changes made in AMP7, but also to look beyond AMP8 and take important steps to reflect supplier feedback, moving towards excellence in all that [it does]”.

It is also preparing for Price Review 2024, and says that the process “will benefit from having the AMP8 supply chain in place to assist with ongoing planning and transition to AMP8”.

It has already appointed five contractors to its £600M medium non-infrastructure works framework and has billions of pounds more worth of contracts for the next five years to bring to tender in the coming months.

The capital infrastructure framework will last for an initial five years of AMP8 with the option to extend for up to three years, one year at a time. The value of the framework is £500M for the initial five years and an approximate £200M for the extensions.

The framework will be for low complexity design and build schemes. It is divided into two lots and southern water envisages appointing up to six contractors.

Lot 1 is for water infrastructure and is worth £294M, while lot 2, for wastewater infrastructure, is worth £406M.

The suppliers shall work with Southern Water to provide engineering capability and expertise to identify and develop options in accordance with the water company’s technical and engineering standards for all aspects of water and wastewater systems.

The appointed contractors will be expected to achieve the required asset performance or customer outcomes by identifying:

• Low build or no-build solutions
• Sustainable including low carbon, catchment, and nature-based solutions
• Lowest Totex or Best Value solutions across an agreed Tranche or Programme of works
• How the solution(s) deliver benefit through the Southern Water’s Balanced Scorecard, and at an aggregate catchment or system level

Contractors will be expected to provide construction management services and expertise including:

• Create, manage and optimise its allocated programmes, including developing programme, tranche and project execution plans as required by Southern Water
• Supporting Southern Water with pre-construction enabling activities.
• Undertaking construction enabling activities (e.g. site surveys, site preparation, streetworks management, including communicating with the customer).
• Preparing all aspects of work delivery planning, including identification of the most cost-efficient civils, mechanical and electrical, and environmental construction resource to deliver the works, for review and acceptance by Southern Water
• Working with the client to regularly optimise the specification and procurement of Southern Water’s Standard Asset List, including use of centralised or buying club solutions
• Managing and undertaking construction delivery to the time, cost, quality and risk parameters agreed with Southern Water
• Managing and undertaking commissioning and handover according to Southern Water’s engineering standards

Interested suppliers are invited to answer a pre-qualification questionnaire by 5 June. Based on these responses, up to six contractors will then be invited to tender in mid-August.

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