Road Haulage and Warehousing Services

Network Rail requires a 24/7 road haulage service to manage the collection, haulage and delivery (including loading and offloading) of materials by road, including, but not limited to: sleepers, short rail, rail ancillaries, aggregates (loose or bagged), switches & crossings, troughing, manufactured materials, and large and abnormal loads, including, but not limited to: locomotives, tampers, rolling stock and specialist switches and crossings to a specified location. The requirement over the previous two years has made ~35,000 individual journeys on a yearly basis covering the entire UK and ~100 international journeys utilising vehicles ranging in size from vans to large extendable flatbeds and cranes.

Network Rail also has the requirement for warehousing management. This includes but is not limited to: physical and systemic receipt of stock; physical and systemic put‐away of stock; management of stock to legislative and Network Rail defined specifications (i.e. Certificates of Conformity, COSHH, detonators); management of life‐expired stock; physical perpetual inventory checks; physical and systemic pick of required materials; physical despatch and delivery of materials to defined delivery point; physical and systemic capture of material proof of delivery records; physical and systemic receipt and processing of requests for material return; physical and systemic receipt and processing of requests for material repair; physical collection of returned media (e.g. pallets, collars and cable drums); physical distribution and collection of repair materials to and from repair agents and systemic capture and processing of such material; provision of Customer Services Helpdesk; undertaking of certified racking inspection checks; collection of materials from some of Network Rail’s Materials Suppliers and delivery to the RDCs; distribution of materials from supplier‐operated Regional Distribution Centres (RDCs).

Standard Operating Practices shall be developed by the successful supplier in conjunction with Network Rail. The scope of the proposed Contract covers combined services including the provision of a transport planning team to co-ordinate and manage all transport requests covering both the Road Haulage and Warehousing distribution requirements, proactively managing all haulage requirements and providing information to support the delivery of improvements in safety, value, and sustainability.

The contract will also include combined system requirements including a Transport Management System, Web-Based Order Portal and a Customer Relations Management (CRM) System. Network Rail has a requirement to operate nine (9) RDCs which also forms part of the scope of this Contract.

Supporting the geographical routes and regions with the supply of maintenance materials, this more localised supply chain is intended to make critical materials more accessible to the end user by being geographically closer to Minor Stocking Points (MSPs) and providing access 24/7 on an on-call basis when outside of core working hours. MSP regular deliveries schedules are required to be managed through the RDC(s) but the operation of the MSPs is outside of the scope of this Contract.

Network Rail requires a supplier to manage and deliver a vehicle trunking service delivering materials throughout the RDC network. The trunk vehicles are currently managed centrally from the Coventry RDC.

There are three vehicles that work to a set schedule. Stock for each RDC is marshalled in Coventry and delivered two or three times each week to every RDC.

Stock picked at the receiving RDC is then loaded onto the same vehicle and backhauled to Coventry, marshalled, and delivered back out to fulfil customer demand at the MSPs. Trunking fulfils customer expectations on the basis that each MSP has a milk run schedule.

Network Rail currently lease the 9 RDCs as detailed within the associated tender documents and the scope of the Contract includes the requirement to operate the leased buildings delivering a warehousing solution. As set out in the Contract, Network Rail requires the successful supplier to be flexible, with the possibility that RDC operations may grow or be downscaled over time.

Any requirements for upscaling or downscaling shall be discussed with the successful supplier on a case-by-case basis. The value of stock, as of July 2025, within these RDCs is currently ~£80m (SCO Network Rail owned), there is additional customer owned stock.

From time to time, Network Rail may require additional storage locations to hold Stock which cannot be stored at existing Network Rail sites (being RDCs and any other Network Rail storage sites). Network Rail currently spends on average £28m per year on road haulage services, and £9m per year for warehousing services, with the expectation of this remaining broadly in line with the annual spend, with an element of flex due to demand. Further details are set out in the specification within Schedule 1 of the Contract.