Highways England has selected Amey for a £423m highway maintenance contract in the East Midlands.

The region, called Area 7 in Highways England jargon, is the first to return to a more traditional contract model, where the client takes more responsibility for managing its contractors rather than outsourcing everything to an agent. Area 7 was previously looked after by managing agent contractor Aone+, a joint venture of Halcrow, Colas and Costain.

Highways England said that the bids were evaluated 80% on quality and only 20% on price. However, Amey’s price was substantially under the £500m estimate in the contract notice last autumn.

As previously reported, Highways England’s predecessor body, the Hiwgahys Agency, scrapped its procurement process for an asset support contractor in Area 7 last year and made the switch to the new procurement model. [See our previous report here.]