Joint venture chosen for central London rail revamp job

A Bam Nuttall and Taylor Woodrow joint venture is the preferred bidder for the £695m contract to revamp Victoria station in central London, Building understands.

The team, which last year clinched the £500m contract to upgrade Tottenham Court Road station, beat off competition from Balfour Beatty/Morgan Est and Costain/Laing O’Rourke joint ventures.

Transport for London’s finance and policy committee made the decision to go ahead with the job this week.

The work is designed to relieve severe congestion at the station, and complements TfL’s own upgrade to the Victoria Line services.

Included in the scheme is a new Northern subsurface ticket hall with ground level entrances, extension to the existing subsurface Southern ticket hall, new tunnels to provide access to existing platforms and new lifts and escalators.

Last month Building revealed bidding contractors had been asked to work without pay for the second year of the scheme. The cash will be refunded over the remaining six years of the job.

The Victoria station upgrade was advertised in January 2008 and was approved by the government last summer. A winner should have been appointed in August 2009, but TfL altered the phasing of the job owing to cash flow problems.