Tender

HS2 signals 2.2 billion pound residual works framework

By Staff Writer  |  27 August 2026

High Speed Two (HS2) Limited has published a pipeline notice for a Residual Works Framework carrying a value of 2,200,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax and 2,640,000,000 pounds including it. The notice, identifier 081473-2026, was published on 26 August 2026 at 4:07pm under the Procurement Act 2023 and records a future notice date of 4 November 2027.

The framework is planned as a single lot. The contract period stated on that lot runs from 9 March 2029 to 9 March 2039, a full ten years. The procedure named is the competitive flexible procedure, the main procurement category is works, and the notice records the framework as suitable for small and medium sized enterprises and for voluntary, community and social enterprises.

HS2 Ltd states that it has identified the need for ongoing access to a broad range of Civil, Environmental and Specialist and Ancillary capabilities to undertake a variety of residual works and associated activities, as required, along the Phase 1 line of route from London Euston to Handsacre, including the Birmingham Curzon Street spur.

What the framework is being asked to absorb

The capability list published with the notice runs to sixteen headings: highways, structures, utilities, drainage, earthworks, landscaping, ecology, heritage, environmental, civil design, surveys and site investigations, temporary works, demolition, fencing, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and building services, and specialist and ancillary works. Against those, the notice sets out the activities expected to be delivered: highway schemes, permanent works, infrastructure completion, land restoration, mitigations, handback, design completion, validations, consents, emerging scope, urgent works and residual requirements.

Two entries in that second list carry more commercial weight than the rest. Handback is the point at which built infrastructure passes to whoever will operate and maintain it, and the works needed to reach an acceptable handback condition are rarely fully defined when a framework is set up. Emerging scope is the notice saying, in its own words, that the requirement is not yet known. HS2 Ltd puts it directly: it requires a capability led framework to deliver packages of works and services, and to have the flexibility to undertake future, currently unknown activities.

A capability framework rather than a works framework

The distinction matters to anyone pricing a place on it. A works framework prices defined outputs. A capability framework buys access to skills that will be called off in packages whose content, sequence and location are settled later. The notice states that works will be split into packages to enable the most efficient delivery of works for HS2 Ltd and the End User, and that a single capability or a range of capabilities may be required to deliver various types of packages.

That leaves the allocation method as the provision worth reading when the tender documents appear. The notice does not say how many suppliers will be appointed, whether the single planned lot will be subdivided by capability before award, or whether packages will be competed among appointed suppliers or directed. None of those points is stated, and a pipeline notice is not required to state them.

The dates are the immediate point

A pipeline notice is a forward signal rather than an invitation. This one carries a future notice date of 4 November 2027, which is the date HS2 Ltd expects to publish the next notice in the process. The framework period does not begin until 9 March 2029. Between the notice and the framework start lie roughly two and a half years, and between the notice and the framework end lie twelve and a half.

The buyer is recorded at Two Snowhill, Snow Hill Queensway, Birmingham, and the contact address published for the procurement is scc@hs2.org.uk. The classifications attached to the single item are construction work and engineering design services, which places design responsibility inside the same arrangement as the physical works. The notice records the procurement as above threshold and marks it under the utilities heading.

What the record does not contain is any figure for the split between civils, environmental and specialist work, any indication of package sizes, or any statement of how the 2,200,000,000 pound value was built up. The figure is a ceiling on a ten year framework, not a contract sum, and nothing on the notice commits HS2 Ltd to spending it.