Balfour rail win

Balfour Beatty is preferred bidder for Railtrack's £180 million Wessex rail infrastructure maintenance contract. The firm has ousted Amec, the previous holder of the contract, to emerge as the favoured contractor.

Two other firms trying to break into the rail maintenance market, Alfred McAlpine and Mowlem, also submitted bids, but have been left empty handed. So far no new contractors have managed to oust one of the original six firms which bought up the old British Rail infrastructure maintenance units when they were privatised.

The Wessex contract, which will be carried out by Balfour Beatty Rail Maintenance, runs for an initial four and a half years. The contract starts on 1 October 1999 and carries an option to extend it by a further three years, taking it up to April 2007.

The Wessex region employs almost 1,000 people, currently employed by Amec Rail. Most of the staff are expected to transfer to Balfour Beatty. Amec Rail's other Southern zone contract in the Sussex area, is unaffected by the Wessex contract and runs until the end of March 2001.

The contract covers all routes out of London Waterloo to Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Devon - an area encompassing routes to Reading, Portsmouth, Southampton, Weymouth and Honiton.

The new contract is the first in Railtrack's Southern zone to be let under the new form of Infrastructure Maintenance Contract (IMC2). This has tighter performance benchmarks and gives greater financial incentives to achieve improved performance.

Mike Welton, chief executive of Balfour Beatty, said Railtrack was looking for improvements to safety, track quality and train operating performance.