7 May, 2014 | By Lucy Mair
The second phase of the Priority School Building Programme is likely to be procured and delivered differently to the current £2.4bn scheme, according to the Education Funding Agency’s director of capital.
Schools minister David Laws has committed 2€bn of the Department for Education’s 2015-21 26€bn capital budget to a second phase of the PSBP, the programme to rebuild the 261 schools in most urgent need of repair in England by 2017.
EFA director of capital Mike Green told Construction News PSBP2 would focus on repairing or replacing individual school buildings, rather than rebuilding whole schools.
“There’s variety in this programme because it doesn’t just do whole schools. We suspect a large part of this will be block solutions.
“Procurement in all probability won’t be identical to the way we did [PSBP]… Whether we batch them, or let them out one at a time, or whether we do a mixture. We have some things to sort out,” he added.
Capital batches of priority schools are currently procured through the EFA’s national Contractors’ Framework of 10 firms, however Mr Green said there may also be a role for the EFA’s new £5bn Regional Framework to play in PSBP2.
The Regional Framework is divided into six regional lots and individual projects awarded through the framework are expected to be worth £3m to £7m, but could range from £200,000 up to £12m.
Last month, Construction News revealed the 37 contractors invited to tender for the Regional Framework, which is due to become operational in July.
The tender list is dominated by national main contractors, with Bam Construction, Kier, Wates and Willmott Dixon invited to tender for all six regions.
Bowmer & Kirkland is competing for five regions, Morgan Sindall for four, and Galliford Try for three.
However, Mr Green said he hoped some of the smaller regional firms shortlisted for the framework would be successful at the tender stage.
“I genuinely believe we need a mix of contractors,” he said, in order to carry out small refurbishments as well as larger projects.
“Our desire is to have a mixture of contractors on there that can do what we need [but] clearly there is a procurement process to go through,” he added.