What happened

West Berkshire Council has awarded Marlborough Highways a seven-year term maintenance contract worth £150m, beating VolkerHighways, Ringway, M Group Highways and Costain, all bigger, more established names in the highways sector. The Essex-based contractor's deal covers reactive and planned highway maintenance, winter gritting, street lighting, safety schemes and active travel work across the county, according to reports in Construction Enquirer and the Construction Index. The contract starts on 1 October 2026, runs for an initial seven years with an option to extend to ten, and could double in value to £300m if local government reorganisation across Berkshire and Oxfordshire widens the council's remit. Marlborough has also committed to running the contract carbon neutral from day one.

Why it matters

Highways term contracts are the unglamorous backbone of the sector. Less headline-grabbing than a stadium or a data centre, but they are what keeps a contractor's order book steady through a downturn, because the work does not stop when private development slows. That a mid-tier contractor took this off four bigger rivals, including two national highways specialists, says something about how councils are weighing delivery record against price right now. It also points to consolidation pressure lower down the highways supply chain: contracts of this length and value increasingly go to firms who can prove carbon and asset management credentials alongside price, not just the cheapest tender.

What it means for your career

If you are in highways, term maintenance or local authority infrastructure, a seven-to-ten-year contract of this size is one of the more secure places to build a career right now, because the workload is contracted, not speculative. Marlborough will need to staff up: contract managers, highway engineers, street lighting and traffic signals specialists, and asset management surveyors with local authority experience, particularly anyone who has run a NEC-based term contract before. West Berkshire and the wider M4 corridor is the patch to watch. If the reorganisation talk across Berkshire and Oxfordshire firms up, the scope, and the headcount, could grow again within a year or two. For QSs and commercial staff currently exposed to the residential slowdown, a well-run highways term contract is worth a look: a steadier pipeline, less exposure to housing market swings, and a client relationship that rewards people who stay the distance rather than move project to project.