Tubelines sets its sights on £200m+ London rail bonanza

Tubelines is gunning for Balfour Beatty's £104m London Underground (LuL) track renewal contract, parts of Metronet's £1bn station programme and the £90m London Overground maintenance deal.

Tubelines' chief Terry Morgan said he expects union opposition to his plans to expand the consortia's workload outside of its London Underground Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Morgan told CJ he wants to grow the business, partly to compensate for a fall-off in PPP workload after Tubelines accelerated its track replacement and stations programmes.

He said rail union RMT is opposed to Tubelines bidding for work outside of the PPP. But Morgan said: "Why not? We are good at it. We have a competence on stations that Metronet clearly has not. Why shouldn't I use that capability to work on stations with a similar scope of work to the work we have been doing?"

Morgan said union opposition will not undermine the consortia's competitiveness. He said: "We've already won work at Bank on the escalators. LuL had the need, we had the expertise, Metronet are overloaded. It sounds like common sense to me."

Morgan said he was happy to bid for Metronet and London Overground work in whatever form it was packaged.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: "We oppose transferring work that is now being done in the public sector to a consortium whose sole motivation is the interests of its shareholders."