Contract award

Four school design and build contracts reach pre-construction stage

By Staff Writer  |  24 August 2026

Four contract award notices published on 21 August 2026 record that pre-construction services agreements have been let on four schools under Construction Framework 2025. Three main contractors are named across the four, and each notice states that the price it publishes covers the early supplier involvement phase rather than the works.

The buyer on all four is the Department for Education. The notices are 2026/S 000-079993 for Cherry Tree Academy, 2026/S 000-079990 for The Holy Family Catholic School, 2026/S 000-079988 for Merrylands Primary School and 2026/S 000-079987 for Castle View Primary Academy. All four were published between 2:49pm and 2:58pm on 21 August 2026 and all four carry the same procedure: award under framework, without competition, to a single supplier, using Construction Framework 2025 under notice 2025/S 000-080063. The main procurement category on each is works and the classification on each is construction work.

The four prices published are 11,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax at Cherry Tree Academy, 12,000,000 pounds at Castle View Primary Academy, 16,219,902 pounds at The Holy Family Catholic School and 19,000,000 pounds at Merrylands Primary School. The corresponding figures including value added tax are 13,200,000, 14,400,000, 19,463,882 and 22,800,000 pounds. Each notice records the procurement as above the relevant threshold.

The qualification the notices attach to those figures is the part that matters, and it is the same wording on all four. Each states that the award relates to a two stage public works contract and confirms that a pre-construction services agreement has been awarded, and that the contract price and expiry date stated "solely reflect the estimated amount to be paid to the Contractor under the Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) phase". Each then records that the price and the expiry date "are subject to confirmation following progression to detailed design and final agreement of the Works under a JCT Design and Build contract". No works sum is published on any of the four notices.

Who has what

McAvoy Modular Offsite Limited, of Lisburn, holds two of the four: Cherry Tree Academy, with an award decision date of 6 July 2026, and Castle View Primary Academy, with an award decision date of 10 July 2026. Speller Metcalfe, of Malvern, holds The Holy Family Catholic School, decided on 26 May 2026. Willmott Dixon Construction Ltd, of Letchworth Garden City, holds Merrylands Primary School, decided on 2 July 2026. None of the three is recorded as a small or medium sized enterprise on its notice.

The framework lots differ. Cherry Tree Academy sits in Lot 6, East of England, low value band. Merrylands Primary School sits in Lot 2, South, high value band. The Holy Family Catholic School and Castle View Primary Academy both sit in Lot 10, North West and West Midlands. Two of the four are described as a mainstream primary and nursery and two as a mainstream primary. The notices name no towns and none is supplied here.

Earliest signature on all four is given as 21 August 2026. The estimated contract periods run from that date to 23 January 2031 at Cherry Tree Academy, to 13 August 2029 at The Holy Family Catholic School, to 29 March 2030 at Merrylands Primary School and to 16 August 2030 at Castle View Primary Academy, each with a possible extension of a few days. Each notice describes the extension as set out in the terms of the pre-construction services agreement.

What the practitioner should take from this

The gap between the figure published and the figure that will eventually be paid is the trap on a two stage award. A reader who takes 19,000,000 pounds as the cost of building Merrylands Primary School is reading a number the notice has already told them is something else. What has been bought at this point is design development and early involvement, priced as an estimate, on terms that expressly reserve the price and the end date until the second stage contract is agreed.

The second consequence sits in the procedure. Each award is recorded as made without competition to a single supplier under an existing framework, so the competitive event happened when the framework was set up rather than at this stage. A firm not on the relevant lot of Construction Framework 2025 had no route to any of these four, and the lot boundaries decided which of the three named contractors could be reached for each school.

The notices publish no target cost, no guaranteed maximum price, no works start date and no completion date, and none has been supplied here. The contract periods above run to the end of the pre-construction agreements as recorded, not to practical completion of any building.