Highway Contracts and Tenders

Highways procurement covers road maintenance and resurfacing, surface treatments and pothole repair, highways term maintenance, bridge and structure inspections and repairs, street lighting, crossings and footway works, carriageway investigations and highway design services. Councils also buy legal advice and professional services for large highways contracts.

Stotles brings together highways tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. Councils let resurfacing schemes as mini-competitions under their own frameworks, so many of those opportunities reach only contractors already on the framework, and smaller road jobs often appear on Contracts Finder.

Highways tenders are scored on quality and price, so bids show how you will programme works to limit road closures, manage traffic and utilities, work safely on live roads and deliver the surfacing specification. Most councils place resurfacing and road schemes through frameworks, so the route in is a place on the framework followed by wins in the mini-competitions.

Roadworks must be carried out by operatives qualified under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, with traffic management and temporary works that meet the Safety at Street Works and Road Works code, and buyers set CDM Regulations 2015 duties. Tenders usually set minimum insurance cover, check financial standing and ask for evidence of similar contracts at selection stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Highway authorities let long term maintenance contracts and frameworks, then call off schemes through mini-competitions, such as Derbyshire's non-strategic road resurfacing framework and Derby's framework for highways services. Structures inspections and design work are tendered separately, often through professional services and technical frameworks.

NEPO's Highways Surfacing framework is used by councils such as Northumberland, Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland for carriageway resurfacing, micro asphalt, grouted macadam and surface preservation treatments, often by direct award.

NEPO's Support Services for the Development of the Built Environment framework covers engineering consultancy, and councils call off from it for bridge replacement design, highway structure assessments and rail bridge inspections.

The South East and Mid Wales Highways framework, set up by the County Council of the City and County of Cardiff, is used by Bridgend County Borough Council through further competition for pedestrian crossings, active travel routes and bridge replacement.

Highway authorities, which means county, unitary and metropolitan councils, are the main buyers. North Lincolnshire Council, Derbyshire County Council and Derby City Council all tender repeated resurfacing and road schemes, parish councils buy small resurfacing jobs, and National Highways buys strategic road programmes and advice.

Most individual resurfacing and road schemes run for a year or less. Highways term maintenance contracts and frameworks run for several years, commonly three to six.

Track the expiry dates of highways term maintenance contracts, council capital programmes and preliminary market engagement notices, which show highways work coming due ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

The core codes are 45233000 (Construction, foundation and surface works for highways, roads), 45233223 (Carriageway resurfacing works) and 45233141 (Road-maintenance works). Other highways codes include 45233100 (Construction work for highways, roads), 45233220 (Surface work for roads) and 45233130 (Construction work for highways).