Contract award
School design and build opens with a 113,000 pound pre-construction agreement
By Staff Writer | 27 August 2026
The Department for Education has awarded a pre-construction services agreement for The Cavendish School to Tilbury Douglas Construction Limited at 113,106.08 pounds excluding value added tax, and 135,727.30 pounds including it. The contract details notice, identifier 081564-2026, was published on 27 August 2026 at 8:18am and records the contract as signed on 25 August 2026.
The award is made under Construction Framework CF25, reference 2025/S 000-080063, by a selective procedure recorded as not competitive. The subject is a mainstream all through school and the classification attached to the award is construction work for school buildings.
The department has published a transparency statement with the notice which says, in terms, that the price on the record is not the price of the building. It states that the contract price and expiry date stated in the notice solely reflect the estimated amount to be paid to the contractor under the Early Supplier Involvement phase.
A pre-construction price against a three year period
The contract period on the notice runs from 25 August 2026 to 6 November 2029, with a maximum extent date of 7 November 2029. The price attached to that period is 113,106.08 pounds.
Those two figures do not belong to the same thing, and the department says so. The period runs to the expected completion of the works. The price covers the early involvement stage only. Anyone reading the notice as a contract sum for a school lasting until late 2029 would be reading it wrongly, and the department has taken the trouble to say why on the face of the record.
Two stage procurement puts a small number on the public record months or years before the real one exists. Unless the transparency wording is read with the figure, the small number is what gets counted.
What happens to the price next
The notice sets out the route. It states that the contract price and expiry date are subject to confirmation following progression to detailed design and final agreement of the works under a JCT Design and Build contract, and that the notice will be updated should the scheme progress to Stages 3 and 5 with the contractor who has been awarded the contract.
So the published position is a pre-construction agreement with a named contractor, a design stage still to run, and a works contract that has not been agreed. The notice names the form the works will take, a JCT Design and Build contract, but gives no edition and no amendments.
It also records that a redacted copy of the pre-construction services agreement is attached to the notice. That is worth collecting. Published pre-construction agreements are scarce, and the redacted terms of one used by the department on its own framework tell a bidder more about risk allocation on the next scheme than any award figure will.
The notice records that the contract carries both a renewal and options, and describes each of them in the same six words: as set out in the terms of the PCSA. It gives no further description of either. The contract is recorded as below threshold, which sits consistently with a pre-construction fee of 113,106.08 pounds and inconsistently with the design and build of an all through school. That is the transparency statement's point arrived at from the other direction.
What the notice does not say, and what that costs a supplier
It does not give the location of the school. It gives no floor area, no pupil number, no construction value and no start on site date. It does not state whether the works will be new build, refurbishment or both, beyond describing the subject as design and build or refurbishment of a mainstream all through school.
The contractor is recorded at First Floor, T3 Trinity Park, Birmingham, is classified on the release as a large enterprise and is not recorded as a voluntary, community or social enterprise. The buyer is the Department for Education at Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith Street, London, classified as a central government public authority. The legal basis is the Procurement Act 2023.
A two stage award produces two entries in the public record, months apart, for one job. The first carries a fee and a contractor name. The second, if the scheme proceeds, carries the sum that matters. Nothing on the first entry links forward to the second except the promise that this notice will be updated. Where that update is made against the same notice rather than published as a new one, a supplier tracking the framework has to re-read notices it has already read to find out that a school has moved from a 113,000 pound agreement to a works contract. The department has said it will update this one. The date on which it does so is not published.