UK: On December 4 Crossrail Ltd named the five bidders shortlisted to tender for two of the three contracts to bore tunnels for the cross-London Rail link.

The bidders are:

• Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd, Morgan Est plc, Vinci Construction Grand Projects and Beton -und Monierbau Gesellschaft;
• BAM Nuttall Ltd, Ferrovial Agroman (UK) Ltd and Keir Construction Ltd;
• Costain Ltd, Skanska Construction UK Ltd and Bilfinger Berger Civil (Ingenieurbau GmbH);
• Dragados SA and John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd;
• Laing O'Rourke Construction and Bouygues Travaux Publics SA.

The joint ventures are bidding for Package C300 covering the Western Running Tunnels and Package C305 for the Eastern Running Tunnels, a total of 18 km of twin-bore tunnel.

Tender documents will be issued by early January, with contracts expected to be awarded by mid-2010. Tunnelling is scheduled to commence in late 2011.

To support the project Crossrail will open a Tunnelling Academy next year which 'will provide Londoners with the necessary skills to work in a variety of tunnelling roles and is expected to train up to 3 000 people by 2015'.