Find out about the procurement process and up coming procurement opportunities through our centralised Route Services team and our Network Rail regions.
Procurement at Network Rail takes place on two levels. Route Services is a division of Network Rail that supplies services that the routes and regions collectively decide are best provided from a single support team. This allows our regions to benefit from economies of scale and allows us to optimise resources on a national basis.
Procurement for capital works can also take place directly through our regions. Following the devolution of Network Rail as part of our Putting Passengers First programme, accountability for the delivery of capital works projects moved to our five capital delivery directors within our regions. To support this, some services, particularly within capital delivery are procured directly through the regions.
We survey our suppliers every year to better understand their perception of us and how we can improve.
We’ve already taken five primary actions to improve our procurement practice and clearly demonstrate our commitment to improving supplier relationships:
- a review of purchase-to-pay processes and implementation of iSupplier
- the development of a strategic sourcing process to manage commercial activity consistently
- the launch of a supplier account management process for key suppliers
- a review of our qualification and assurance processes
- a refresh of our standard suite of contracts.
The procurement service centre is the first point of contact for procurement enquiries. Find out more and complete a procurement service centre request for further assistance.
Consolidated procurement pipeline
We recognise that providing our suppliers with visibility of our future procurement requirements creates a basis on which to plan their business, the ability to recruit, develop and retain staff with the skills necessary to support our demands and the knowledge to support investment decisions in plant and equipment, and innovation. We update our procurement pipeline every 4 weeks.
Download procurement pipeline (898 KB, xlsx)
To further support our supply chain's ability to plan ahead, you can see our renewals forecast and volume report at the link below. This report is updated three times a year after each rolling forecast (4, 8 & 11) and will be published here following Department for Transport and ministerial clearance.
Download renewals forecast and volume report (79 KB, xlsx)
National contracts
Contract register
Our contract register is updated each period. Here you will find details of all our national contracts and frameworks as well as who to speak to if you need more information about a particular contract.
Download the contract register (177 KB, xlsx)
Category management
We’ve established 30 category families which cover our entire expenditure profile. While doing this, we defined the category scope by connecting it with RISQS codes.
Category strategies consider the category from a company-wide perspective and use historic and, more importantly, future demand and market analysis to define a three-to-five-year strategy for each category family. For more information on this, please get in touch using the procurement service centre request form.
We also publish our category management pipeline (504 KB, PDF) and update this on a regular basis.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Information technology | IT services including software, hardware and business systems |
| Telecoms | Operational telecoms, all voice and data, and hardware |
| Facilities (hard services) | General building maintenance, including air conditioining, heating and propery management |
| Facilities (soft services) | Office and station service, including waste management, cleaning and catering |
| Supplies and services | Equipment used by operational staff: office supplies, uniforms, and coperate travel and accomodation |
| Road fleet | Road fleet costs, imcluding purchase, hire and maintenance. |
| HR and training | External training and staff benefits |
| Business consultancy | Consultancy for business services, including marketing services, legal services, management consultancy, financial and insurance services |
| Recruitment services | Recruitment services related to both permanent and temporary staff (excluding consultants and contingent labour) |
| Utilities | Electricity, water and gas for offices, stations and depots, including electricity for powering trains |
| Professional services: direct | Railway infrastructure design, technical consultancy and commercial services |
| Rail and ancillaries | Short (60ft) rail |
| Sleepers and bearers | Concrete, steel and timber sleepers and bearers, and cable troughing (sleepers hold the rails apart and support the track on the ballast) |
| Ballast | Ballast and associated loading and unloading activities (ballast is the graded stone sub-base used for drainage and support of the track) |
| Switches and crossings, and ancillaries | Modular and traditional railway switches and crossings, including related ancillaries (switches and crossings are part of the rail system at junctions between different rail lines) |
| Rail haulage | Logistics and operation of rail haulage |
| Rail fleet | Purchase and maintenance of rail wagons and locomotives, including seasonal treatment fleet |
| On-track machines | On-track machines for treatment and maintenance of the track |
| Intelligent infrastructure | Train-and non-train-mounted remote condition monitoring systems for the monitoring of the rail infrastructure |
| Contingent labour: direct | Temporary infrastructure labour (including possession management) working under the direction of Network Rail |
| Infrastructure support services (on-and-off track) | Support services for infrastructure maintenance, including track and vegetation clearance |
| Plant and tools | Plant and tools, including hand tools and portable plant |
| Railway spares | Spares required for the maintenance of the railway infrastructure |
| Signalling | Design, build and maintenance of railway signalling systems |
| Electrification and fixed plant | Projects, materials and services to support the electrified part of the rail infrastructure |
| General civils | Construction not related to station redevelopment |
| Buildings | Station building and renewals (shop fitting and renovation of existing stations) |
| On-track plant | On-track plant (for example, road rail vehicles) |
| Security solutions | Security equipment, manned security and policing costs |
| Track | Track renewal projects and maintenance support |
Standard suite of contracts
We provide access to our suite of contracts to all suppliers. More information, including a downloadable copy can be found on the dedicated standard suite of contracts page.
Standard suite of contracts
Supplying capital works projects
Our regionally based teams, each headed up by a capital delivery director, work hard to increase capacity on the network by developing, designing and delivering enhancements and large complex capital projects. Renewals works, to replace expired infrastructure with modern equivalents in line with our Railway Upgrade Plan, also fall under the responsibility of capital delivery.
With over 11,800 live projects nationwide, our regional capital delivery teams rely on an extensive supply chain to help deliver a better railway. Accountability for the delivery of capital works projects now sits at a regional level but assurance of capital works projects remains centrally managed in the organisation.
CP6 capital delivery frameworks
Our CP6 frameworks are structured in to regional, national and design services frameworks.
Download CP6 capital delivery framework awards (200 KB, PDF)
