Private sector procurement

We provided all engineering design services for the £30 million Newcastle Schools PFI project involving the replacement of six schoolsAs the private sector increasingly makes its mark in the procurement of education infrastructure, at Mott MacDonald we’re playing a growing role in scheme delivery, providing all services from strategic and technical advice to design and project management, for all parties from lenders to owners to developers.

In the UK we’ve been making our mark on landmark schemes ever since the introduction of the government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI). St Genevieve’s secondary school for 1000 girls in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was one of the first to be built under PFI – we provided all engineering services for the new complex replacing the former school including technical advice to the development consortium during the negotiation phases. And for Glasgow Schools PFI Project – one of the UK’s largest and winner of the PFI Project of the Year Award in 2002 – we were project manager for the successful construction partner Amey Miller.

Drawing on the wealth of experience that saw us named Best Technical Advisor and also Best Procurement Team at the 2005 Public Private Finance Awards, we provide expert advice on all technical matters including managing the pre-qualification process, developing contract documents, evaluating bids and taking the scheme to financial close. Following financial close we can manage the construction process and once the scheme is built we will monitor the operation and maintenance stage. For some developments we’ve acted as the lender’s technical advisor for the pre and post financial close stages.

We were part of the winning consortium appointed by Portsmouth City Council in the UK to design, build and manage the new Milton Cross secondary school funded and operated as a Private Finance InitiativeOur current PFI portfolio in education ranges from acting as Worcestershire County Council’s technical advisor for the £60 million Bromsgrove Schools PFI project – involving building seven new schools on five sites – to undertaking a five-year technical advisory framework contract with the Borough of Telford and Wrekin Council on all its PFI projects, beginning with the £70 million Hadley Learning Community PFI project. This combines with the Jigsaw project – a new school with residential accommodation for secondary age pupils with special needs – to form what will be one of the UK’s first new ‘full-service’ schools and follows an American ‘extended school’ strategy linking education, social and healthcare services all on the same site.