About

The East West Rail Alliance was established in 2015 to deliver East West Rail Phase 2 (EWR2), connecting communities and businesses between Bicester and Bedford, and Milton Keynes and Aylesbury, providing passengers with much improved cross-country rail links.

The Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO) for EWR2 was approved by the Secretary of State for Transport and came into force on 25th February 2020, this now allows the EWR Alliance to start main construction works.

Read the full story on Network Rail’s website

Our Charter

Our charter is an integral part of the way we operate and defines our mission, our values and behaviours.

More than a simple list of our values and behaviours, our charter is written into our Project Alliance Agreement (PAA) and has been designed to create and maximise the benefits of a truly collaborative, innovative culture in a high-performing team.

In addition, our charter forms a key part of the way we want to work with our supply chain partners and tender responses will be judged based on how well a potential partner will align to our collaborative culture.

Supply chain opportunities

The Alliance procurement strategy is founded on four procurement routes:

  1. Self-delivery – the Alliance will self-deliver certain packages directly via the companies involved in the Alliance: Atkins, Laing O’Rourke, Network Rail and Volker Rail (the Alliance participants)
  2. Affiliates – The Alliance participants have a number of affiliates within its own group structures and existing supply chain arrangements and frameworks set up to help the Alliance deliver the works.
  3. Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) – There are a number of packages that are critical to the success of the project that are neither self-delivered nor carried out by affiliates that will be the subject of Early Contractor Involvement. These packages were identified early on in the development of the project and the Alliance has been working collaboratively with our ECI contractors to develop
  4. Supply chain – The majority of our packages are neither self-delivered, carried out by affiliates nor subject to ECI, and present an exciting opportunity for businesses of all sizes to get involved with the project, including local SMEs. In addition, the Alliance’s ‘Tier 1’ contractors will have various opportunities to sub-contract packages of work to the supply chain, presenting more opportunities for businesses to get benefit from the project.

For more information on the packages available, visit our opportunities page.

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