British consortium join forces to bid for new programme manager role at London Olympics.

Amec has formed an all-British consortium with Balfour Beatty to bid for the revamped programme manager role for the 2012 Olympics.

The pair, who have already worked together on the Jubilee line of the London Underground, are understood to have reached an agreement last week.

Bechtel, the American infrastructure giant, is also now expected to bid for the work, whose value could now reach £5bn rather than the £1.7bn initally expected.

Due to the size of the revamped tender, KBR and Parsons Brinckerhoff are believed to be the only other real contenders from the six original bidders.

The Olympic Delivery Authority retendered the role last week and renamed it the "delivery partner" role after chief executive David Higgins scrapped the original programme management tender.

The new role has been massively expanded from the initial remit of providing infrastructure, and now covers initial design, maintenance and conversion of the site for post-Games use.

Bidders for the original tender were: KBR and Capita; Mace, Davis Langdon and Deloitte; Amec; Arup and Gardiner & Theobald; and Parsons Brinckerhoff.