Cairngorm Funicular Structural Strengthening

Description

Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE) is delivering a major structural strengthening scheme to the existing funicular railway at Cairngorm Mountain in the Scottish Highlands. The Cairngorm Funicular Railway was constructed in 2001 and consists of circa 1750m length of elevated viaduct and a 250m cut and cover tunnel. The base station is at 650m elevation and its top station terminates at 1097m with a height gain of circa 450m. Structural appraisal and investigations have identified a number of areas of structural inadequacy in the viaduct structure. The funicular railway operation has been halted and a number of areas of strengthening are necessary before the structure can be deemed safe for the resumption of operation. This is a call off contract using the SCAPE Civil Engineering Scotland framework agreement. The Civil Engineering Scotland Framework was procured via a two stage “restricted” process which fully complies with Regulation 29 of the Public Contract (Scotland) Regulations 2015. Throughout the process to set up the framework, tenders were evaluated on the basis of the most economically advantageous tender having regard to both price and quality. The qualitative and financial submissions were weighted in the ratio of 60% for quality and 40% for price. The Civil Engineering Scotland Framework is a single supplier framework. The call off process involves verifying the contract costs using the agreed Framework rates and resources were agreed between client and contractor to ensure the call off contract could fully meet the project requirements.