DfE alerts contractors to £15.4bn schools framework

The Department for Education (DfE) is set to unveil a £15.4bn construction framework, it has announced.

The new framework is planned to run for six years, from December 2025 to December 2031, with a two-year extension period possible afterwards.

Potential work involves construction jobs in all areas of England, covering primary, secondary, special schools and further education buildings.

The DfE is holding the last of a series of bidders’ events on Monday (10 March), after which a full tender notice for the Construction Framework (CF25) panel will be published.

Officials from the DfE and Cabinet Office will be among the speakers at the hour-long engagement session, which will be held on Microsoft Teams.

Suppliers can sign-up for registration here.

The new programme will replace the existing four-year CF21, which is set to expire in November 2025.

Worth £7bn, the previous iteration was introduced in November 2021 and included a total of 22 lots.

Tier one contractors such as Bam, Bowmer & Kirkland, Kier, Wates and Willmott Dixon landed places in the highest-value lots for projects valued at £12m or more.

Morgan Sindall, ISG, Galliford Try and Tilbury Douglas also won places on all eight medium-value (£6m to £12m) regional lots in CF21.

Kier won a place on all 12 low-value lots for projects up to £6m.

Bowmer & Kirkland was the DfE’s top supplier in the 2023/24 financial year, data obtained by Construction News under the Freedom of Information Act showed.

It received £313.5m from the department in the period, up from £197m in the prior year, when it was also the contractor that received the most money from the DfE.

Bam Construct was the second largest supplier in 2023/24, earning £176.7m, while Kier was third with £167m.