Sunderland plea to speed up BSF project delivery

Sunderland City Council is hoping to use the Partnerships for School’s Academies framework to deliver its entire £102m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme.

The council wants to use the academies framework to speed up the delivery of its BSF programme and to avoid the cost of setting up a Local Education Partnership. The city’s BSF scheme involves the construction of six secondary schools, of which three are City Academies. None of the six schools is to be privately financed.

John Thompson, BSF capital manager for Sunderland City Council, told CJ that using the framework could slice six months off the schedule. “The programme has slipped somewhat, so if we take the OJEU route for the three secondary schools there are real time implications for us. It could add another six months. Whereas if we can piggy back the framework, we could be on site by the end of 2007.”

Using the academies framework, the council would choose three of the six framework contractors to work up sample designs for three schemes before choosing one firm to deliver all six schemes.

The spokesman said the council would know by the end of this year whether it could use the academies framework (see page 1 for framework winners).

[Contract Journal, 1 November 2006, p 3]