Six in contention for £1.8bn Kent BSF deal
00:00 29 Nov 2006
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Six consortia have been longlisted for the first of Kent County Council’s three Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme.
The consortia are: Inspired Spaces (Carillion/Fujitsu); Invicta Learning Partnership (Laing/Centerprise); Investors in the Community (LS Trillium/Mill Group/Northgate); Kent Learning Communities (Bilfinger Berger/Civica); Skanska RM (Skanska/RM); and Transform Schools (Balfour Beatty/Morse).
The council’s £1.8bn BSF programme is the largest in the country and will be let in three separate tranches, each worth around £600m.
The first scheme will refurbish or rebuild all secondary schools in the Kent districts of Gravesham, Thanet and Swale. Out of the total of 12 schools, three will be refurbished under the private finance initiative.
A final shortlist of three bidders is expected in late January 2007 and a preferred bidder should be selected by October next year.
The scheme forms part of the third wave of the government’s £45bn BSF programme, which plans to renew all secondary schools in England over the next 10 to 15 years.
Ten BSF contracts have been awarded to date, and more than 20 are under procurement, but only two – the Bristol and Greenwich schemes – have been signed.
[Contract Journal, 29 November 2006, p 2]