UK CONSULTANCY group Halcrow has won a £2.5 million exclusive contract to help the City of York Council with its transport planning, traffic engineering, network management, new roads and maintenance.

The group, which has two offices in York, beat five other shortlisted companies for the contract which is designed to make savings and efficiencies by concentrating on one engineering consultancy rather than a number of expert firms.

The Engineering Consultants Framework Contract is for a five-year period with an option to extend it a further two years.

A spokesperson for the city council said: "We have used a number of specialist contractors in the past to help the work of the council's own engineers.

"We want to rationalise that by using one rather than a range of consultancies."

It means that firms like Mouchel Parkman, of Northallerton and Epsom-based Atkins Consultants which were called on for help by the Council in the past have now lost out.

Work will be carried out at Halcrow's main York office above the post office in Lendal. It also has a railway signal engineering office around the corner in Museum Street.

The framework, which will be managed by Kate Morris of Halcrow's consulting business group, is likely to play a big role in helping the Council carry out its new five-year Local Transport plan.

Stephen Pells, Halcrow's regional director, said: "We impressed the City of York with our consistently high performance in response to a wide range of projects, from school transport through bus priority, transport buildings and park-and-ride site design.

"The council was particularly impressed by our specialist knowledge and described our Intelligent Transport Systems team proposals as the best in the UK.

"Our success in this bid is largely attributable to our ability to project Halcrow as an integrated service provider.

"We simply offered a greater range of demonstrable in-house expertise than anyone else. This success proves that when we pull together as one, we can beat anyone in this increasingly important market."

The City of York deal is impressive even by Halcrow's national standards. In 2001, York was named a Centre of Excellence in cycling and park-and-ride; in 2002 it achieved maximum marks for achievement from the Audit Commission in transport, buses, cycling and park-and-ride, and in 2003 it was named Local Transport Authority of the Year at the National Transport Awards.

Updated: 10:59 Monday, June 07, 2004