Highways consultancy services

Tender description

Transport for Wales (‘the Authority’), in partnership with the Welsh Government, invites expressions of interest from suitably qualified and experienced economic operators to provide a wide range of authority site representative services for Sections 5 and 6 of the A465 Head of the Valleys Dualling scheme (Dowlais Top to Hirwaun), which is currently being progressed using the Welsh Government's Mutual Investment Model (MIM). The authority intends to hold a supplier engagement event at the Clayton Hotel, St Mary St, Cardiff CF10 1GD on 24.2.2020 at 2 p.m. and invites economic operators to register their interest in attending. Please note that there is a maximum of 2 delegates per economic operator. The A465 Heads of the Valleys Dualling Project comprises improvement of 40 km of trunk road between Abergavenny and Hirwaun from single to dual carriageway. The project has been divided into 6 sections to enable a phased delivery programme. Most sections have been or are in the process of being improved to a dual carriageway, but Sections 5 and 6 (the 17,7 km length between Dowlais Top, Merthyr Tydfil and Hirwaun) remain a single carriageway. Based on options assessment, the proposed scheme is a predominantly online dualling of the existing A465 trunk road in Sections 5 and 6. The existing 3-lane single carriageway would be upgraded to a 70 mph dual carriageway with 2 lanes in each direction and grade-separated junctions. This would complete dualling of the A465. This scheme, which is currently in procurement, will be delivered by a private sector delivery partner, through a Mutual Investment Model (MIM) contract with Welsh Government. The private sector delivery partner would be responsible for designing, building and financing the scheme. The project is nearing the end of its OJEU competitive dialogue process with invitations to submit final tenders (ISFT) programmed for mid-February 2020; the announcement of preferred bidder (PB) scheduled for April 2020; financial close (FC) by August 2020 and, commencement of works on-site anticipated to begin at the end of calendar year 2020. The authority site representative roles encompass a number of commercial, highways, technical, structures and design roles, some of which will be full-time and commence 6 months prior to anticipated financial close with the preferred bidder. Other roles will be phased in and anticipated to be a mixture of full- and part-time site and off-site roles under the overall management and direction of a project director. All-in-all, it is envisaged (but not prescribed by the authority) that circa 15.0 FTE ASR resources and specialists will be required for an estimated period of 5 years commencing as close to preferred bidder stage in April 2020 and, subsequently, for the whole duration of project Co’s construction period which is anticipated to be some 4 and a half years.