Contract award
Springboard Two direct awards 7.48 million pound building services contract
By Staff Writer | 27 August 2026
Springboard Two Housing Association Limited has made a direct award of 7,482,488.17 pounds excluding value added tax, and 8,978,985.80 pounds including it, to Morgan Cass (Civils) Limited for the design and installation of mechanical, electrical and plumbing services. The contract award notice, identifier 081537-2026, was published on 26 August 2026 at 6:48pm under the Procurement Act 2023. The award is recorded as active and dated 26 August 2026.
The contract period runs from 4 September 2026 to 1 December 2027, with a maximum extent date of 1 March 2028. A milestone on the notice records a future signature date of 3 September 2026. The notice records a renewal provision in one sentence: the contract end date can be extended to align to a revised works completion date.
The procurement method recorded on the notice is direct award. No competition was run for this contract, and the notice does not publish the ground relied on. The value is above threshold and the main procurement category is works.
What the record contains, and what it does not
The published description of the requirement is six words long: design and installation of MEP services. The classifications attached to the single item are electrical installation work of heating and other electrical building equipment, and mechanical engineering installation works. Delivery is recorded against London. There is no site, no scheme name, no unit count and no statement of what the mechanical and electrical package serves.
That is a thin record for a contract of this size, and it is worth being plain about the limits of what can be said from it. Nothing on the notice identifies the building or buildings, the form of contract, the design responsibility split, or the reason a direct award was chosen over a competed procurement. Those are not omissions to be filled by inference.
Design responsibility inside a direct award
The one thing the description does establish is that design sits with the contractor. Design and installation, taken together, put the responsibility for the mechanical and electrical design on the appointed firm rather than on a consultant novated to it. On a package of 7,482,488.17 pounds running for fifteen months, the definition of the design brief the contractor is designing against becomes the document that decides where change sits.
Morgan Cass (Civils) Limited is recorded on the notice as a small or medium sized enterprise, registered at Britannia Business Park, Comet Way, Southend on Sea. It is not recorded as a voluntary, community or social enterprise, a public service mission organisation or a sheltered workshop.
The sequence of dates
Three dates sit close together on this notice and they do not describe the same event. The award is dated 26 August 2026 and is recorded as active. The future signature date is 3 September 2026. The contract period begins on 4 September 2026, the day after signature.
An award recorded as active on a day when the contract is not scheduled to be signed for another eight days is a statement about the buyer's decision rather than about a contract in force. What that eight day interval is for is not stated on the notice. The renewal wording gives the only clue to how the parties expect the programme to behave: the end date can move to align to a revised works completion date, which anticipates that the works date will be revised.
The buyer is registered at Bruce Kenrick House, 2 Killick Street, London, and is classified on the notice as a public authority of sub central government. The notice is a UK6 contract award notice published on the public procurement service, and the lot structure is a single lot recorded as complete.
For anyone tracking direct awards in social housing, the figure is the point. A direct award above threshold is a decision to place a contract without competing it, and here that decision carries a value of nearly seven and a half million pounds before tax. The notice records the decision and the price. It does not record the reasoning, and this report does not supply it.