IN Brief:
- The Environment Agency has launched an eight-year framework with an estimated £5 billion ex VAT value.
- CDF2 spans design, technical support, and construction across flood, coastal, navigation, and environmental assets.
- Three lots, three hubs, and a 27 April deadline mean bidders now need to lock in regional and lot strategy quickly.
Environment Agency has opened procurement for Collaborative Delivery Framework 2, a long-term programme for flood, coastal, navigation, and environmental works that is expected to run from February 2027 to February 2035.
The notice puts the framework at an estimated £5 billion excluding VAT, or £6 billion including VAT, and sets out a scope that ranges from strategy, appraisal, and design to technical support and construction. The Agency says CDF2 will be used across flood and coastal risk management, navigation, and water, land, and biodiversity assets, with projects spanning both nature-based solutions and more traditional hard engineering approaches.
The structure is broader than a single national lot. CDF2 is split into three technical lots and three geographic hubs. Lot 1 covers strategy, appraisal, and design services across all values. Lot 2 covers detailed design and construction for schemes below about £5 million, while Lot 3 handles detailed design and construction for projects from around £5 million up to £150 million. The geographic hubs are North, Midlands and Southwest, and East and Southeast.
The framework is expected to appoint up to 16 suppliers, with call-offs awarded either with or without competition. Other risk management authorities will also be able to use it, which gives the vehicle a wider reach than a standard Environment Agency-only procurement. The procurement is being run through a competitive flexible procedure, reflecting the newer public procurement model now being used on major frameworks.
The first live deadline is now in view. Requests to participate are due by 10:00am on 27 April 2026 through the Find a Tender notice for CDF2, while the award decision is currently scheduled for 19 October 2026. That timetable gives bidders a relatively short window to settle lot strategy, regional positioning, and evidence for both technical and delivery capability.
For the wider market, the significance of CDF2 is scale as much as pipeline continuity. Flood resilience, coastal defence, and environmental asset management are already generating steady civil and construction workload across England, and this framework now sets the commercial structure that will shape a large part of that delivery through the next decade.
