The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has awarded a contract for the provision of strategic consultancy services to support its evolving monitoring role in light of anticipated rail industry reforms, including the creation of Great British Railways (GBR).
Under this agreement, the appointed supplier will deliver expert advice, analysis, and design services to assist ORR in defining its future regulatory responsibilities, planning for transition, and strengthening organisational capabilities.
The contract is structured as a call-off agreement, with individual Statements of Work (SoWs) to be issued throughout the contract term. The supplier is required to demonstrate multi-disciplinary expertise across rail economics, infrastructure, operations, and stakeholder engagement.
The contract runs until 31 March 2026, with a maximum value of £200,000 (inclusive of VAT).
This procurement was conducted under the below-threshold Competitive Flexible Procedure in accordance with the Procurement Act 2023.
To review and assess the efficiency, effectiveness of Network Rail's written governance (rather than operational compliance) in managing lifts and escalators.
This assessment should review and assess a) Network Rails current position and b) Network Rail's intended position is, noting the current changes underway in L&E written governance and changes in L&E asset management model.
The ORR is seeking an independent supplier to provide a complete end-to-end Alternative Dispute Resolution scheme for the rail industry on a not for profit basis, to include the following key features:
a. free to consumers;
b. an impartial arbitrator for firms and consumers in resolving disputes;
c. run on a not for profit basis;
d. issues decisions that are binding on firms but not consumers; and
e. a source of evidence and intelligence, drawn from its role resolving disputes, on issues that may cause consumer detriment in the rail industry, the overall passenger experience of raising a complaint about a rail service.
The public consumption API is an external user-interface to our underlying, publicly available data within our data lakehouse. To align with our Data Strategy aim of automating processes and outputs, this tool will allow users to query our data lakehouse and extract information from it, providing an efficiency saving on our monthly production of data tables. It will also provide users with machine-readable outputs that can be exported and re-used.
The third Road Investment Strategy (RIS3) will set out the requirements to be delivered by National Highways during the period 2026-27 to 2030-31 (road period 3 or RP3). The process of setting and varying the RIS is set out in National Highways' licence. ORR's role is to provide advice to the Secretary of State on the extent to which the proposed requirements are challenging and deliverable within the financial resources to be provided. This is known as the Efficiency Review.
ORR is seeking to appoint consultants to support the RIS3 Efficiency Review.
Successful bidders will be responsible for scrutinising aspects of the Draft SBP and providing expert advice and analysis. For each lot, the final deliverable will be a report setting out the consultant's findings. ORR will draw on these reports when developing its advice to the Secretary of State. The advice itself, and the opinions it contains, remain the responsibility of ORR.
The ORR project team and consultancy teams will need to work in an integrated manner during the Efficiency Review. In some cases, the boundaries between various lots are overlapping. Therefore, consultants will also need to liaise with each other during the process.
Direct engagement with subject-matter experts within National Highways will be required. National Highways and ORR will facilitate interviews and workshops for this purpose. Meetings will typically be attended by both consultants and ORR. The ORR will submit requests for data and information to National Highways on the consultants' behalf via an agreed process for the Efficiency Review.
This project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of National Highways' ongoing management of biodiversity and water quality improvements that it has delivered. This should include a review of National Highways' relevant asset management processes and data collection/reporting.
● Evaluate the adequacy of NR CP7 WRCCA planning for Operational Property (Buildings) assets, particularly heritage and vulnerable Building asset groups.
● Assess how well NR WRCCA strategies incorporate performance-based design, including lifecycle considerations.
● Benchmark Network Rail's approach against best practice for strengthening existing buildings.
● Recommend enhancements for CP8 WRCCA planning that reflect a proportionate, risk-informed, performance-based framework.
● Support accountability and transparency through a top-down and bottom-up synthesis of climate hazard, vulnerability, and mitigation planning.
The purpose of this project is to undertake an independent actuarial review of Network Rail's Industry Risk Fund (IRF) and Network Rail Risk Fee Fund (NRFF). Both funds are central mechanisms of the Rail Network Investment Framework (RNIF) and are designed to provide third-party promoters with protection against defined liabilities when delivering enhancement projects on the national rail network.
The scope of work comprises the recalibration of the Network Rail and Train Operator Payment Rates, Network Rail and Train Operator Benchmarks and Sustained Poor Performance (SPP) thresholds in the passenger Schedule 8 regime. Each of these parameters (except SPP thresholds, which are defined at the train operator level) is defined at a service group level, of which there are around 150, and must be recalibrated for each of these service groups. Monitoring Points, Monitoring Point Weightings and Cancellation Minutes are out of scope, as explained in this section under 'Exclusions from scope'.