Kier, Graham and Sisk highways framework: design and carbon notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Kier Transportation, John Graham Construction and John Sisk & Son will share National Highways’ £968m legacy concrete roads reconstruction framework, targeting the 5% of England’s motorway and trunk network still built in 1960s–70s concrete. Running for six years to 2032, the programme covers full pavement demolishment and reconstruction, principal designer/contractor duties, and design of temporary traffic management on sections concentrated in the northeast, Yorkshire, East Anglia and the southeast. Contractors must record carbon, and recover, recycle and reuse arisings to minimise embodied emissions and support circular-materials use.
Technical Brief
- Programme mobilisation starts “this month”, with works ramping under a six‑year renewals schedule.
- Contractors must act as both principal designer and principal contractor under CDM, consolidating design–build risk.
- Scope explicitly includes full demolishment of existing concrete pavements, not just overlays or partial repairs.
- Temporary traffic management design and implementation are bundled into the framework, affecting staging and lane occupation.
- National Highways notes concrete sections have required “very little maintenance” historically but are now life‑expired.
- Legacy concrete is concentrated along England’s eastern corridor, with isolated lengths in West Midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester.
- Carbon obligations include capture, recording, reporting and maximised reuse of arisings to reduce embodied emissions.
Our Take
Kier’s role in this National Highways concrete roads programme comes on top of recent wins on the Department for Education’s £15.4bn CF25 framework and the New Hospital Programme, signalling a deliberate tilt towards long-duration public frameworks that can smooth workload and cashflow through to the early 2030s.
For Graham and Sisk, landing places on a £968m highways framework in England diversifies away from their strong healthcare and building pipelines noted in our coverage, giving them a more balanced portfolio across transport and social infrastructure as UK vertical markets cycle at different speeds.
With concrete roads accounting for only about 5% of England’s motorway and trunk network, a dedicated six‑year reconstruction framework suggests National Highways is prioritising targeted life‑extension and carbon reduction on the most problematic legacy assets rather than wholesale network-wide renewal, which contractors will need to reflect in their plant, materials and logistics strategies.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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