Tender

Environment Agency opens market engagement on flood asset framework

By Staff Writer  |  23 August 2026

The Environment Agency has published a preliminary market engagement notice for a framework that would replace two of its existing flood defence maintenance arrangements. The notice was published on 21 August 2026 and states on its face that it is not a call for competition.

The notice is a preliminary market engagement notice under the Procurement Act 2023 and carries the identifier 2026/S 000-079826. It records that the Environment Agency is seeking supplier participation in a face to face pre-market engagement event ahead of the procurement of an Asset Operation, Maintenance, and Response 2 framework, which the notice shortens to AOMR 2.

AOMR 2 is described as the replacement of two existing Environment Agency frameworks for the maintenance of the Agency's flood defence assets. The scope recorded on the notice also takes in vegetation management, habitat creation and incident response. The main procurement category is works.

The event will be held in person on 14 September 2026 in Birmingham. The stated purpose is to provide information and to gather additional feedback from the market which will help to develop the framework design. There is a morning session and an afternoon session, and suppliers are asked to sign up to one of the two rather than to both. Venue capacity is limited, so no more than two delegates per supplier are sought, and places are allocated first come first served. Registration closes on 9 September.

A briefing pack will be issued approximately five days before the event. The notice records that it will carry background material on the development of AOMR 2, details of how market feedback received to date has been acted on, and a number of questions and subjects that suppliers are asked to consider in advance.

On money, the notice records a total value, described on its own face as estimated, of 1,000,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax and 1,200,000,000 pounds including it. The procurement is recorded as above the relevant threshold. Estimated contract dates run from 17 January 2028 to 16 January 2032, a term of four years.

Those figures are carried here with the qualification the notice itself attaches to them, and the card for this item leaves its value field empty for that reason. The notice states that the procurement remains subject to approval, that the Agency does not intend to be bound by any information given at this stage, and that it makes no commitment to incorporate any recommendation or suggestion within the final procurement documents. It goes on to state that all information provided is subject to change, including the programme and the contract value, and that none of it guarantees the level of work any future framework will generate. A figure the publisher expressly disclaims is not a contract sum.

What the practitioner should take from this

For a contractor already working under either of the two arrangements being replaced, the timing is the part of the notice worth acting on. Engagement is happening in September 2026 for a framework whose estimated start is January 2028. That is the window in which the framework design is stated to be open to influence, and it closes more than a year before any work is let under it.

Several things a bidder would want are absent from the notice and are not supplied here. It does not name the two frameworks being replaced, does not set out a lot structure or a geographic split, does not say how many suppliers would be appointed, and gives no date for a contract notice. No procurement documents are attached to it.