News story

£1.1 billion defence estate contracts awarded

Three estate maintenance contracts with a combined value of £1.1 billion have been awarded by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO).

• From: Defence Infrastructure Organisation
• Published: 12 May 2014

Elements of the European battle group on Salisbury Plain (library image)

The prime contracts have been awarded under the next generation estate contracts (NGEC) programme to the following companies:

• national housing prime (NHP) contract, valued at £626 million, to CarillionAmey (Housing Prime) Ltd
• national training estate prime (NTEP) contract, valued at £322 million, to Landmarc Support Services Ltd
• Scotland and Northern Ireland prime contract, valued at £152 million, to CarillionAmey Ltd.

The 3 contracts have been awarded on a 5-year basis, with the option to extend up to an additional 5 years.

The contracts provide planned and reactive maintenance, including grounds maintenance, and have the capability to deliver additional professional services, low value capital works and capital projects up to a value of £3.93 million. The contracts ensure sites continue to be kept safe, legal and operational at all times.

The awarding of the 3 contracts represents a major milestone in the NGEC programme, and this will be followed shortly by the awarding of 3 further regional prime contracts for the central, south east and south west of England, which are due to be awarded in June 2014.

Matt Foley, DIO Head of Future Procurement, said:

Over the last 10 years, DIO has rationalised our contracting arrangements from over 250 to 6 manageable NGEC prime contracts in 2014.

These are designed to deliver value for money for [MOD] and the taxpayer through a coherent set of firm-priced contracts, which further improves financial stability. I look forward to working closely with our new prime contractors and I am confident that the companies selected will meet the high standards required on the defence estate.

Upgraded military families' accommodation at Bulford (library image) [Crown copyright]

Major General Mark Armstrong, DIO Director Service Delivery, said:

DIO’s priority is to support our armed forces by providing the places they need to live, work, train and deploy on operations. Prime contracts have not only been designed to provide operational capability at all times, but are also flexible enough to adapt to future requirements of the defence front line; allowing for service requirements to be changed in a timely and cost effective way.

In line with Ministry of Defence’s continuing commitment to providing decent accommodation for military personnel, the NHP contract represents a national contract covering more than 49,000 military homes across the UK. The new contract replaces a number of different, existing contractual arrangements to support service families’ accommodation.

This contract has greater scope than previous maintenance contracts, as it provides additional services for managing move-in, move-out services, housing allocations and the installation of furniture and fittings.

There has been a great deal of progress made in the delivery of accommodation services to service personnel and their families, including improving the standard of accommodation, the introduction of an online application system, patch management, and using survey data to improve our customer service. DIO’s aim is that the new NHP contract will build on these successes over its lifetime.

Britain’s armed forces depend upon the training estate to prepare for operations. The NTEP contract will deliver a range of technical support, maintenance and repair services and soft facilities management, including catering and a training range booking service. The NTEP contract will manage over 190,000 hectares of UK training estate, used by up to 30,000 defence personnel each day.

The Scotland and Northern Ireland prime contract will deliver repairs and maintenance services to the built estate, as well as security maintenance services across 30 sites in both countries. It replaces the current regional prime contact for Scotland and 2 contracts delivering routine maintenance work in Northern Ireland.

Both the NTEP and Scotland and Northern Ireland prime contracts are due to be in service by November 2014. The NHP contract will be implemented through a phased mobilisation programme by December 2014.

Published 12 May 2014