Nine teams, one very large framework

Thames Water has named the nine contractor and consultant teams that will share its Major Projects Framework for AMP8 and AMP9, worth an estimated £4.8bn including VAT. Construction News and Construction Enquirer reported this week that the winning line-up is BAM Nuttall, Barhale, Costain, a Binnies, Cadagua and Ferrovial Construction grouping, Murphy, an Amentum and Taylor Woodrow pairing, Galliford Try, Kier and Mott MacDonald Bentley. The framework is due to start on 4 November 2026 and run to March 2030, with options to extend to 2035.

Why it matters

Thames Water has spent much of the past two years as the company England's water sector worries about, under financial scrutiny and short of investor confidence. This framework is a sign that, regardless of the company's balance sheet troubles, the capital works programme itself is not stalling. Nine teams covering nine different specialisms (civils, process, mechanical and electrical, engineering design) have just been handed a multi-year route to market for major water and wastewater projects across the Thames Water region, from London out through the Thames Valley and the south east.

For the water sector as a whole, this lands alongside Anglian Water's own AMP8/9 major projects framework and United Utilities' and Yorkshire Water's recent framework awards. The pattern across England's water companies is the same: long term frameworks, signed now, running deep into the 2030s, so that the workforce around them can be planned rather than scrambled for.

What it means for careers and hiring

For commercial, project management and engineering staff already inside any of the nine named firms, this is several years of visible pipeline to point to, which matters when you are deciding whether to stay somewhere through a difficult market or whether the grass really is greener. It also gives those nine firms a strong hand when they go recruiting: a framework with a signing date and a 2030 (or 2035) end date is a much easier story to tell a candidate than "trust us, the work is coming."

If you are not at one of the nine firms but want to be, the specialisms most in demand over the next twelve months are likely to be civil engineers and quantity surveyors with clean water or wastewater treatment experience, project planners comfortable with NEC contracts on multi-year frameworks, and commercial managers who have worked AMP cycles before and understand the regulatory funding rhythm behind them. Barhale and Murphy in particular tend to recruit heavily into site-based delivery roles once a framework like this starts issuing task orders, so expect vacancies to follow in the new year rather than immediately. Anyone currently in a shrinking part of the market, note the earlier CPA forecast, water is one of the few places hiring is accelerating rather than easing off.