LONDON -- A Carillion-telent joint venture has signed a 7-year contract to provide nationwide support services for Openreach, BT’s local access network business.

Under the contract, which follows a letter of intent signed in August this year, the joint venture will deliver a range of engineering, support and maintenance services, consolidating work currently carried out by a number of outsourced suppliers. Services will include delivery of support and installation services, asset management and maintenance, across Openreach’s five regions - London and Home Counties, the South East, Midlands, Wales and West, the North, and Scotland.

Transition arrangements are now in place and the team is in the process of transferring work from the seven existing outsourced contracts over to Carillion-telent as one, consolidated single supplier.

The integrated joint venture will be a 60:40 Carillion-telent partnership.

John Small, Managing Director for Service Delivery, Openreach, said: “Openreach is introducing a new way of working with a single nationwide supplier that will drive up quality and lower our cost base, allowing us to continue to build a strong and healthy business. It will deliver more straightforward processes for our people, who are key to the success of this transition. We look forward to Carillion-telent’s support with all our transition plans, and are keen to build on our strong partnership with the joint venture to deliver continuous improvements going forward.“

telent plc (London: TLNT)