Highways England has awarded its final two contracts as part of its new delivery arrangements in the reorganisation of the East Midlands maintenance programme.

Ahead of Highways England bringing operations and asset management functions back in house in the East Midlands from the start of next month, all key Area 7 contracts are now in place.

Rogers Structural Inspections, a Derby based firm, has been awarded the contract for structural inspections, which Aspin acquired in October 2014 and has a value of around £3 million over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the Met Office has secured the weather forecasting contract, which will run for a minimum of three years and is worth around £1 million.

The award of these two latest contracts comes after last month’s appointment of suppliers to the new East Midlands framework for construction works.

The framework will provide a number of services, which include general civil engineering, landscaping, drainage and pavement.

Highways England marked the changes in delivery by recently holding a launch event with it supply chain at its new Mansfield-based office.

Along with the newly appointed construction work contractors, representatives from Amey, the maintenance and response contractor, were also in attendance, along with design services contractor, Kier (Mouchel).

Highways England’s Director for Commercial and Procurement, David Poole, said that the establishment of the community by working with their supply chain partners will be crucial to the new approach to delivery and asset maintenance in the East Midlands being successful.

He added that the organisation is looking forward to working in collaboration with their new colleagues from the supply chain over the next few months and years.

Among the other contractors that have been appointed to the Construction Works Framework are Ground Control (Landscape and Ecology), J. McCann & Co (Nottingham) (Road Lighting and Electrical Works), Jointline (Road Markings) and Taziker Industrial (Corrosion Protection).