The power to educate
When a Main Contractor is appointed to deliver a new school building, 12 months can pass before the full award is granted and work starts on site. In that time, power availability secured for the project can expire meaning they’re left with a problem. Jonathan Hopkins, Managing Director of BGS Utilities explains what can be done.
“To make the lights come on in a building, you need a power supply. This is something which is currently in high demand in the UK, so to help manage the situation Network Operators are required by Ofgem to put expiry dates on connection agreements. This ensures no one is holding the queue up with what’s known as ‘zombie projects’, but also means if your development doesn’t meet certain timeline milestones, you’ll lose your Point of Connection (PoC).
“This can be a problem in the education sector. In a typical scenario, Main Contractors will go to the relevant Distribution Network Operator (DNO) for whichever part of the country they’re in to obtain a power supply quote which they can submit as part of their tender to the Department of Education. But what’s tending to happen, is this quote expires before the contract has been awarded – meaning the Contractor has to go through the whole process again with the risk of price increases or no power at all.
“What then often happens following initial contract award, is Main Contractors will turn to an Independent Connections Provider (ICP) to value engineer the original DNO connection quote for them. But what this sequence of events does, is add risk. For an ICP to provide an accurate quote and if the PoC has expired through waiting for the final contract award, they will have to reapply. There is no guarantee with this approach that the PoC will still be available, leaving the project without power.
“So that’s all quite challenging – what are the alternatives? The key is to keep the PoC live. And to do that, you need to work with a connections provider who’s fully invested in your project.
“As an example, we’ve delivered a number of school building projects with a Tier 1 Contractor based in the North of England. Because we’ve spent time developing our relationship with them, we’ll work together during that 12-month lead in, but are mindful of keeping their outlay to a minimum. Over that time, we can review their build plan, location details and other key information, to can help them understand the infrastructure logistics, look at power availability and even see where delays could be experienced with offsite cabling routes.
“What this approach does is simplify the whole network connection process. It gives them insight into key dates, helping them plan their programme of works. We can also go one step further when a contract is awarded, by ensuring our design team is proactively keeping the utilities arm of a project moving and getting the legals started which is all part of the critical pathway to project delivery.
“So, my advice for ensuring your project can go live, is to understand what’s involved in delivering its utility infrastructure. If you can get ahead at tender and contract stage with a thorough knowledge of the site and begin to mitigate against its challenges, you can put yourself in the driving seat rather than risk being caught out and potentially losing money if you don’t meet your deadline.”
