National Grid Has Awarded £12bn in HVDC Civil Works Contracts

National Grid has completed the award of its High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) civil works supply chain framework, with £12bn worth of agreements confirmed. This announcement marks the third and final stage of our £59bn supply chain framework awards and underlines the commitment to delivering the energy infrastructure needed to support the Great Grid Upgrade and the UK’s energy transition.

A total of six HVDC converter civil works suppliers have been awarded positions on Lot 1 of the Framework Agreement totalling approximately £9.07bn. In addition, three HVDC onshore cable civil works suppliers being awarded places on Lot 2 of the Framework, worth an estimated £3.7bn. The successful HVDC converter civils suppliers are Balfour Beatty, BAM Nuttall, Galliford Try, Laing O’Rourke, Skanska and Taylor Woodrow. The HVDC onshore cable civils Framework has been awarded to Balfour Beatty, Murphy, and VolkerFitzpatrick.

Contracts have been secured for a five-year period, with the potential to extend for a further three years. Both Frameworks cover confirmed and anticipated projects, including Eastern Green Link 4, in partnership with SP Energy Networks and LionLink in partnership with TenneT .

Through our HVDC Converter framework National Grid has recently announced preferred bidders for Sea Link and Eastern Green Link 4.

The first tender under the new HVDC civils framework will shortly be underway for the shared southern works required for Eastern Green Link 3 and Eastern Green Link 4.

One of the aims of the HVDC frameworks was to strengthen and broaden our supply chain, encouraging new market entrants increase manufacturing capacity. One example of this is Sumitomo, who are building new HVDC cable manufacturing facilities in the UK for the first time in over 20 years.

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