Lowery appointed to Eastern Routes Partnership (ERP)

London - Traction power and rail systems and infrastructure specialist Lowery is pleased to announce our successful appointment to the collaborative Eastern Routes Partnership (ERP) Framework for Network Rail Eastern Region for CP7, with the option to be extended for up to an additional five years to cover CP8.

Lowery is one of 15 contractors to be appointed to the £3.5bn framework. In our role as E&P Specialist (Lot 4B), we have, per Network Rail "..been awarded a workbank where, due to the scale or scope of the requirement, we need a smaller delivery partner with a particular specialism". Disciplines will cover Electrification and Plant (e.g. Substations, SCADA, Switchgear and Feeders) and Signalling Power (FSPs, PSPs, DNOs) amongst other requirements.

We look forward to maximising value created for Network Rail as an ERP partner, including social value (new lasting local careers, apprenticeships and more), more efficient delivery (via the ERP MVP process) and sponsoring technological innovations to support the ERP's planned step-change in rail infrastructure delivery. This builds on the high-levels of financial and technical efficiency and social value outperformance by Lowery on comparable CP6 schemes.

Mark Gubbins, Managing Director, said: "Building relationships with Network Rail on some of the countries busiest and most economically important routes, whilst realising carbon efficiencies, innovation improvements and sending everyone home safely every day will be transformative over the course of the framework. We at Lowery look forward to investing in local specialist high-quality careers and delivering on behalf of the ERP."

Daniel Burge, Operations Director, commented: "We look forward to collaborating with Network Rail and our fellow ERP partners through CP7 and beyond. This is a time of great challenge and change for the railway and Lowery will be making our contribution to solving those challenges for the better of the travelling public and freight operators."

Jake Kelly, Managing Director for Eastern Region at Network Rail, said: “This launch is the culmination of two years of hard work to bring real innovation to our commercial delivery in CP7. The ERP framework is key to effectively maintaining our infrastructure to deliver a sustained improvement in train performance over the next five years.”

“It’s designed to strengthen our relationships with our supply chain partners, letting us utilise their skills and experience. ERP also lets us take a more collaborative approach by bringing our engineers, delivery teams and the suppliers together, earlier, to identify the minimum viable product."