Decision details

The Newhaven Port Access Road (NPAR) is identified as a priority in the County Council Plan as well as within the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership Local Growth Deal.

WSP hase been the design team since the start of the project and is responsible for the schemes design. The construction contract is a “build only” contract and with further highway design consultancy input being required for the scheme through the construction phase, it is not desirable to change consultant. WSP has a huge amount of valuable invested knowledge in the scheme and if a different consultant were appointed, not only would this knowledge be lost, but additional time and money would need to be spent to bring them up to speed, and also for them to review the design before adopting it as their own.

It was decided that this tender should be directly awarded to WSP using the WSCC Highways Professional Services Framework (Option 1) as this supplier was also responsible for designing the scheme.

Option 2: Continue as non-contracted spend

Original contract cannot be extended due to spend to date.
Cost remain the same but risk to Council high – due spend being higher than allowed under the original contract.