Social housing firms seek contractors for £500m worth of work
A PROCUREMENT body responsible for commissioning work from contractors has issued a tender notice for up to £500m worth of construction work in the North West.
Innovation Chain North West, which purchases contracts for some of the region’s biggest housing associations including Great Places Housing Group. Adactus, Plus Dane and Harvest Housing Group, has split the four-year agreement into eight seperate pools to allow for greater involvement from smaller contractors.
Five of the lots are broken into small works programmes of between £500,000 to £3m per contract covering five geographical areas. Three of the other lots are for contractors to carry out larger works projects worth £3m-£10m each.
The biggest single lot is for a contractor to carry out a large works programme worth up to £200m in an area stretching from Staffordshire and West Derbyshire in the south through Cheshire and Greater Manchester up to Lancashire and the Ribble Valley. Other lots are for an area covering parts of Yorkshire and the East Midlands worth £13m and a £6m contract covering works in Cumbria.
In total, the overall value of the contracts is estimated to be worth between up to £500m, but the tender states that this sum was “a very approximate estimate as the capital value of works will be influenced by the amount of public subsidy available and other financial considerations that impact upon affordable housing viability and supply”.
It added that it expects the total sum of all the lots to range between £200m-£300m.
Innovation Chain North West was set up to share learning about sustainable construction methods and best practice as well as generate economies of scale when procuring services.
