Hello, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to our Capital Markets Day. We're delighted to be hosting you here at the QTS head office, a center of innovation in rail excellence. We're incredibly proud to have this brand within the family of Renew. Hopefully, the weather's going to be kind to us and behave itself, although it certainly doesn't feel like summer at the moment. Renew is extremely well represented today. We have the entire executive team. Our Chairman, David, is in the room somewhere. We have our Senior Non-Executive Director, Shatish, in the room. The entire group leadership team is here, as well, of course, as managing directors and senior leaders from our subsidiary brands.
Responding to frequent requests, this event provides open access to the entire group leadership team, rather than just seeing myself and Sean on a regular basis, and it's our opportunity to articulate the broad range of capabilities and services we now have as a group, as we face into some excellent growth opportunities in our end markets. I remain incredibly proud to be leading this brand, that's full of talent, facing into incredible opportunity. My hope is that by the end of this day, after meeting and listening to my colleagues and leadership around the group, looking under the bonnet of Renew, you will leave with a clearer appreciation of our key differentiators, the tremendous future this group has, and importantly, the strengths of our reliable investment case.
Looking at the contributors to this initial briefing session, before, as Lisa said, we commence our tour and the demonstrations, I'm gonna start with a brief overview and introduction. Our senior group leadership will provide presentations covering rail, water, how we're collaborating, and how we're responding to the resource challenge ahead of us. We've made time for an open Q&A session, as Lisa said, at the end of the session, but clearly throughout the day, there's gonna be plenty of opportunity to satisfy any further curiosity you have with my colleagues. The conclusions and onward travel are planned for 3:15 P.M. We continue to describe our activities and the business across these five sector blocks. It's our four engineering sectors that are featured here today. You'll be meeting and hearing from our 10 brands that operate across rail, infrastructure, energy, and environmental.
In terms of our engineering services focus, we remain very disciplined in terms of the specific areas of the markets where we operate. Through organic and inorganic expansion, we've now become truly multidisciplinary in how we deliver our direct services, and we've become deeply embedded in long-term national network programs. We seek out non-discretionary and maintenance and renewal demand in these markets, and these present extremely high barriers to new entrants. The U.K. infrastructure market is underpinned by reliable long-term commitments. We're also seeing a prioritization of investment towards renewing and maintaining critical assets, and this is precisely where we are focused and now deeply embedded. There are numerous other growth drivers in play, including the green infrastructure agenda, as well as our route map through to Net Zero, 2040, 2050, or 2060, depending on your persuasion.
As well, of course, as the impacts of increasingly extreme weather events. The vulnerabilities this is exposing, on an ever-increasingly frequent basis, particularly where we operate, is creating plenty of opportunity for Renew and its brands. Here is our growth profile, our financial growth profile over the last five years. It should be remembered, this incredibly progressive profile has been achieved despite a global pandemic and numerous economic shocks. As you will hear during the course of the day, we're currently facing into a number, of significant growth opportunities. We really are feeling, the effect of some tailwinds currently. We're therefore very confident that this progressive profile can and will prevail. Looking very briefly back to our recent half-year results, they pointed to further progress this year, further growth in the period.
I would pick out the strong organic growth during the reported period, good cash generation, success in rail and water frameworks. You'll hear more on that shortly from my colleagues, and a 5.5% increase in the interim dividend. Importantly, two strategic bolt-on acquisitions. I'm pleased to report, both integrating extremely well. We have a consistently high return on capital profile, averaging 27% over the last four years. This is reflective of our asset-light operating model. Given the discipline in terms of what we choose to do and where our growth opportunities are coming from, this profile is unlikely to change going forward. As Sean frequently says, this is our favorite slide in the deck. We're extremely proud of our reliable and impressive earnings record, reflecting our disciplined approach to the quality of our operating margins.
A 17% compound annual growth rate over this period has involved 11 acquisitions, as well as reliable organic growth. In fact, the profile of organic to inorganic, growth over this period is remarkably symmetrical, over the term. In terms of M&A, this is how we summarize our M&A program. We recently reported we've increased our bandwidth, to help us in this area with the appointment of an M&A director. Matt is with us today. Please go and have a conversation with him. And we can report that the current pipeline is extremely healthy. Opportunities that we're looking at can be categorized as a consolidation in a fragmented market, expansion of our service offering, entry into new sectors that we've flagged, including transmission and distribution on the electricity network and into the renewable space, key target areas for us going forward.
More recently, we see M&A as an opportunity to increase capacity and to also support our ongoing demand for qualified resources in the sectors where we operate. We have a strong balance sheet, a well-proven and tested diligence protocol, and we remain ambitious, yet cautious in our approach, and this has served us extremely well in recent years. In summarizing the strengths of our investment case, I would say that this consistent performance really does clearly demonstrate the differentiating model that we have. Our risk profile is much lower than those we are commonly compared to, given the services that we provide and our direct delivery approach to work. We have consistently executed to strategy, and this has delivered the reliable earnings growth that I've illustrated. Our markets have high barriers to entry and are underpinned by resilient dynamics.
We have market-leading positions and are now deeply embedded across numerous critical U.K. infrastructure programs. We remain committed to growing the business, both organically and acquisitively. Hopefully, that has been a useful, succinct introduction from me. I think importantly, I'm now gonna hand to my colleagues, to go through the various sectors, including rail, water, and as I said, collaboration and how we're finding resources in the market. I'm initially gonna hand to the group leadership team, Simon, who's going to deliver a sector on rail, understanding the market dynamics.
Thank you, Paul, and good morning. I'm Simon Ellison, Renew Group Rail Sector Director. I'll be joined shortly by Andy Steel, our QTS Managing Director, and over the next 10 minutes or so, we're gonna highlight how we're engineering sustained growth in rail. Andy?
Thanks, Simon. The rail industry is much more than train and track, but what generally tends to be more the public see. In fact, in the rail industry, we are hardly involved in either of them. We're mostly involved in any maintenance and replacement of the infrastructure around the railway, over the railway, under the railway. You can see some examples on the screen. Geotech and remote access and earthworks over here, heavily involved, working the slopes around and supporting the railway, and it's an area where innovation has been absolutely as well as our use of modern survey techniques, as you'll see some examples of the... You don't hear me? No. Can you hear me from the back and off there, or I'll start again? Okay, thank you.
So yeah, as well as our survey kit, which you'll see an example of later on, we develop our own bespoke drilling equipment to speed up the process of installing soil nails in slopes and laying grass over it to protect them. These methods avoid digging out soil and replacing the quarry soil, which helps Network Rail's carbon targets. Where we can't design a solution like that. Where we can't do that, we do excavate and replace small materials. We use our own plant and equipment. Again, all this kit is, we design in-house and use on and off track, and generally come up with methods that do not need to close the track to carry out the work. So that's absolutely key to Network Rail.
This means we're much more efficient in real terms, carbon terms, and it's much easier to work in daylight, to be honest. Another example is AmcoGiffen's works in stations and structures, improving accessibility for travelers. You can see Luton Parkway up here, the second from the left at the top. Network Rail couldn't close the line for long enough to get a new structure across it, usually with that into trains. So AmcoGiffen, in partnership, came up with the first-ever solution to launch the bridge on the railway, with trains running and with the railway live, 25 trains running through at the same time. Absolute innovation at the time. The project involved design and delivery of safety access across the bridge, lifts, stairs, CCTV, information boards to connect the railway to the new Luton Airport terminal. Garforth Access for All, that's much better, Dan. Thank you.
It's up in the top ri`ght there. It's another a new footbridge with lifts and platform improvements. The steel structure was fabricated and designed by AmcoGiffen's own team at their Barnsley facility, and it was specially designed to also allow sightlines to a nearby historic structure, which you may be able to see just behind it in the screen there. Access for All is a rolling program of station improvements from Network Rail, and replacements and accessibility is one of their key objectives over the new next control period, over the next five years. Asset management, still staying in the top line there. We've got five-year-plus civils asset management frameworks across the country that deliver emergency, reactive, planned maintenance to Network Rail's civils assets like bridges, drainage, earthworks, tunnels.
Network Rail's assets are mostly aged, and the budget to replace them is just not there, so maintaining and monitoring is a key part of their business plan. Our emergency on-call arrangements means that we can mobilize within two hours of any situation preventing the safe run of the operational railway and get trains running again. Electrification and Plant, down the bottom left there, power. Network Rail's focus in decarb over the next five years is another focus for the rail teams. And you'll hear later about how we're working together to deliver electrification of the railway. With that increased electrification comes more maintenance, which we are well-placed to cover with our recent purchase, as Paul mentioned, of REL, especially when you consider our innovative ways of working, which again, you'll see an example of later on.
De-vegetation, I should have more wrote, taken a note of where these were. Third down on the left, which is where QTS started it all, is still a huge part of our business. The effect that the tree, trees can have on train reliability is massive, with fallen trees, signal sighting, all affecting trains if they're not managed properly. The beauty of this type of work is that the trees regrow every year. In fact, now with biodiversity challenges, Network Rail are asking us to plant trees. I'm sure we're gonna get found out at some point, but so far, we're good. Our innovative planting methods mean we are market leaders in the field. We're always looking for new ways of utilizing plants used in forestry, converting it, and using it in the railway.
Again, finding ways of carrying out the work, different methods with trains still running is a huge part of that as well. You'll see a demo of our Mega Chipper later on, and see how we can speed up processes, at the same time taking people out of positions of risk and reducing those plant-people interfaces that can cause safety problems. Our fleet of road/rail Mercedes Unimogs travel around the country, and then they run on the railway to get our staff and equipment to site as efficiently as possible, leave site with all the kit and all the chips inside a box in a Unimog, and the trains can run on time. This innovative plant has been a keystone of QTS' growth and AmcoGiffen.
Taking plant machinery, converting it into bespoke kit which can travel and work on the railway, is where we stand out from the rest of the industry. No other main contractors do this. Our clients love the innovation. As well as the efficiencies found, it reduces safety risk, reduces time on site and their risk of trains not running in the morning, and it makes them look good, which is always a great thing. As well as the Mega Chipper, we convert drainage machines, excavators, and for example, compactor, which reduces the number of staff needed to carry out works, speeds the works up by up to 10 times, as a real benefit when working in between trains. The Soot Scabbler, in the bottom left there, it's a great bit of kit, massively speeds up the process of removing decades of soot built up inside tunnels.
The forwarder, down the bottom right, is another piece of forestry kit that's been converted to work and travel on the railway. No other main contractor develops this kind of machinery, and we've got a great reputation with our client for coming up with different solutions to old problems. All of this innovation is also exciting for our staff, as you'll find out when you meet some of them later on. Sharing videos on social networks is a great hook for new staff, and having the benefit of our own training organization means that we can offer great opportunities for newcomers. We're always oversubscribed when we launch a new Rail Skills Academy, where we provide 10 weeks of funded training or experience to young people over a 10-week period.
We always get too many people, and all of them come out of that period into a full-time job in the railway. The opportunities are massive. With that, I'll hand back to Simon.
Thank you, Andy. The reason we continue to invest in our people and our capability like this is ultimately to help Network Rail run a safer, more reliable and more efficient railway, which in, in turn, gives us access to this huge market and rail spend. We've just recently, at the beginning of April, transitioned into what we now call CP7, Control Period 7, and Network Rail have a committed spend of GBP 45.4 billion over that period. Importantly for us, it's a GBP 31.9 billion spend on renewals and asset maintenance. That's where our specialism, that's where our focus lies. In fact, there's already growing pressure mounting from industry bodies, from Great British Railways, to accelerate and increase that spend on maintenance. Next year, British railways will celebrate their 200th birthday, which is fantastic, but unfortunately, some of the assets are feeling that age.
This is definitely non-discretionary spend. And on top of these aging asset pressures, we can all see it, there are more climate events, there's a demand to make sure that the railway is more accessible to the traveling public, that it's more reliable, it's greener in terms of more electrification, and all this whilst being more efficient. And Network Rail have always relied on us in terms of finding continually more and more efficiencies, and they're going to need us more than ever in this control period, because they've committed to GBP 3.8 billion worth of efficiency savings between now and the end of 2029. So all these pressures, it's good news for Renew, because there's so much demand for our services. We've got the people, we've got the capability, we can address these issues.
The next piece of the jigsaw is then access to market. Thankfully, we've got an unrivaled presence and positions across the U.K., across all five devolved regions... We're delighted with our tender performance so far in terms of building on our position, strengthening our position, which we have done from CP6 into CP7. We've won three new frameworks in North West and Central, which is really important because we lost some ground between CP5 and CP6. We've got that back now and some more on top. We've expanded our offer into electrification with winning E&P, the Electrification and Plant framework, which is right across Wales. We couldn't have done that without the collaboration of our joint rail brands in Renew, coming together with a combined skills offer. I know it's difficult to see, but that opens up a massive opportunity.
So the whole of Great British, Great- the, Great Western electrification now needs maintenance. And anybody who travels in and around London, particularly out of Paddington, and that stretch, what they call the, the Brunel, the first 13 mi, is plagued with reliability issues. We're out there on the ground, boots on the ballast and up on the masts at the moment, putting that right. So it's a great opportunity. And then the other main frameworks with either renewed those or extended those into CP7. So we really are in great shape. This next slide further demonstrates that. You can see the coverage and the spread we've got our rail offices and depots right across the U.K., and this provides a real differentiator and competitive advantage in terms of being agile, in terms of being to respond quickly and efficiently.
In the bottom corner here, you can see the amount of remits that were assigned each year, literally thousands, and these are the small, repetitive type works. But while small in size, we do these on a huge scale. So any learnings, any innovations, any plant innovation materials, we can scale that up and, of course, return on investment across thousands, literally of these activities. And we also find that opportunity and repetition in the projects as well. The Access for All schemes that Andy mentioned, we're quickly becoming and seen as the industry experts. We design these in-house with our own design capability, so that's new bridges, lift shafts, access ramps, et cetera. We manufacture in our facility in Barnsley, so the primary and the secondary steel, and then we take these to site, do the civils, install them.
The more schemes like that we can do, the more we can influence standardization of those designs, and with that, efficiencies that Network Rail and that we benefit of in terms of scale. In the top left, you can see the assets. We have a deep domain knowledge of the network and all the assets that underpin that. We're the first to be called out if there's an embankment slip, if there's an issue with a rock cutting, if there's a sinkhole, and unfortunately, we are seeing more and more of those events with the extreme weather. In fact, believe it or not, Scotland is actually getting wetter, and I only learned in the last few weeks that over the last 10 years, Scottish summers are 10% wetter, winters 19% wetter, and it's gonna be wetter still.
So not great news, but from a business point of view, we can help and manage the impacts on the network. So in summary, this investment in our people and capability, the positioning to be able to respond to the client, to the network needs, being trusted to deliver across everything we do, is the reason why rail and Renew has been so successful and so valued by Network Rail over these last two control periods. And if we look at the growth and stand back, it really is outstanding. 100% growth across the two control periods, 50% growth across the last five years to over GBP 400 million. We're now the largest supplier of asset renewals and maintenance to Network Rail, and in terms of Network Rail's overall supplier spend league table, we're third behind EDF Energy and Siemens Mobility.
That's ahead of the likes of Murphy's, of BAM, of Colas Rail, of Balfour Beatty, et cetera. Now, unfortunately, I can't take any credit for all this growth because I've only been with Renew business for just come up to two months. But what I can see, and importantly, what I've what I felt, the culture around the place, on the contracts and the frameworks in the offices is really, really strong. The way that people are valued, engaged, empowered, supported, the transparency that you'll see today, hopefully the passion that you'll feel and see today, the passion about the work that we do, about innovating, about the plans around developing people's careers and supporting them with their growth. And it's authentic.
So that's why you'll feel and see so much pride, and that together with the work we're doing today, to make sure that we remain fit for today with one eye clearly on the future, making sure that we're engineering and shaping a better tomorrow, and making sure that Rail and Renew is fit for the future. That's why I've got so much confidence that we'll build on this momentum and this growth story and retain our industry leading position into CP7 and beyond. So thank you. I'm now gonna hand you over to Tom, who's gonna take you through our growth in water. Thank you.
My name is Tom De La Motte. I'm Group Sector Director for Renew, responsible for water and highways. I'm delighted to be joined today by the MDs of our four water brands. On my left, they're all here. I'm going to ask them to stand up and sort of wave a little bit so you see them. First, Paul McMahon, MD of Browne and Enisca . Next to him, Jamie Pritchard, MD of Envolve Infrastructure, and then Adam Harker, MD of Seymour Civil Engineering. You're going to hear from all of those later on in the presentation. But first, today, I'm going to talk about the progress that Renew has made to grow the scale, the scope, and the quality of its water offering to become one of the leading providers of maintenance and renewals to the U.K.'s complex water infrastructure network.
And as a result, why that ideally positions us to take advantage of what is a huge growth opportunity presented by the start of the next water asset management plan period, or AMP8, as it's more conveniently known. After that, I'll pass back to the guys who will talk to you in a little bit more detail about their own individual businesses. And then they'll provide you with a bit of an update on the progress and successes they've had so far with AMP8. Renew have had a presence in the water sector for a number of AMP cycles now, dating back to the acquisition of Seymour in 2007. And over subsequent AMPs, we've gradually expanded our geography, increased the number of long-term frameworks with water companies, and we've done that both organically and through acquisitions.
The next acquisition being that of Envolve, or Lewis, as it was known back in 2013. Things really started to accelerate for us when we got into AMP7. We secured a couple of really important new clients in Bristol Water and Yorkshire Water before we acquired Browne. And with Browne came a very strong presence in London and the Southeast and a number of really quality blue chip frameworks. Then, most recently, we acquired Enisca, their own mechanical and electrical engineering and asset optimization business when they came into the group in 2023. So we've now got a direct delivery capability of more than 1,700 staff and operatives, and in the current financial year, sales from our 41 water frameworks will exceed GBP 200 million for the first time, and that takes us more than 20% of the Renew Group's annual revenue.
Acquisition of Enisca was really the last piece of our strategic jigsaw ahead of AMP8, because that enabled us, for the first time, to provide a fully multidisciplinary service offering. The guys are going to explain a little bit more about what a multidisciplinary service offering looks like when they get up later on. They also gave us an off-site manufacturing capability with our facilities in Northern Ireland and provided a specialist systems integration expertise, and we think that's going to be particularly important for us during AMP8. In a lot of ways, Enisca has been the glue that's allowed us to maximize the opportunities for in-group collaboration. Again, the guys will talk about some good examples of that in their presentation, and that sits very nicely alongside some of the success we've had with a couple of selective external joint ventures.
With the addition of Enisca, we've now got operations covering the whole of the U.K., and we work directly for 10 out of the 12 U.K. waste and water companies. We hope to increase that to 11 by the end of the AMP8 procurement process. We also work for three of the largest water-only companies, and you can see all of those shown on the screen in front of you or behind you. We provide services for those from 18 depots and offices spread across the whole of the U.K. So having developed our national, multidisciplinary, direct delivery, renewals and maintenance service offering, we really do believe we're in an excellent position to take advantage of what is a huge opportunity for growth through AMP8. So what does that opportunity look like?
You probably already heard about the significant increase in total spend proposed from AMP7 to AMP8 by the U.K. water companies in their business plan submissions to Ofwat. Those plans represent an 87% increase in spending from GBP 51 billion in AMP7 to GBP 96 billion, and possibly even GBP 103 billion in AMP8. That really is an incredible increase, but it's actually needed.
If you look at the vast number of assets, and I've listed some of them up on the screen there, that need to be maintained and improved, and when you put that in the context of some underinvestment by the water companies, probably over the last couple of AMPs, and you look at recent increases in extreme weather events, rising population, and the U.K.'s drive for Net Zero, it's not surprising that water has a number of well-publicized challenges going into AMP8. Three, in particular, all of which that are driving spend in AMP8. First is increasing the U.K.'s water resilience, making sure that there's good, clean water there when you turn on your tap. Anybody watching the press recently should know that that's not always a given. Improving the quality of our water, basically taking nutrients, like phosphorus, out of the water supply.
Finally, the one that's really been in the public eye recently is reducing the amount of pollution that goes back into our rivers and water courses as part of the water process. Now, quite a lot of money is starting to be spent on that now, but that is really going to drive spend in the early stages of AMP8. So for the next few years, lots of money put aside for that. Importantly, for Renew, the solutions to all of these challenges are going to come through an increase in spend in AMP8, to be focused much more on renewal and maintenance of the network, and we're perfectly positioned to take advantage of that. That's why we expect our addressable market to almost double in size to GBP 46 billion during AMP8.
A lot of that investment is undoubtedly going to need to be funded, at least in part, by an increase in our monthly bills. How much Ofwat will permit the water companies to increase those bills will have an impact on the total investment that goes into AMP8. We'll get our first insight of exactly how much Ofwat thinks that should be when they make their draft determinations on the water company business plans on the eleventh of July. That's come back a couple of weeks just to make a bit of space for the U.K. elections. Whilst the final investment total is still to be determined, what we do know is it's going to be a significant increase from AMP7. That's an absolute given.
As such, over the last few months, the U.K.'s water companies have been spending a lot of time working hard to secure the resources they need to deliver their business plans. Undoubtedly, the availability of skilled resource is going to be one of the biggest challenges for the sector in AMP8, and indeed for the rest of the industry in coming years. I've put a chart on the screen there just to give you an impression of the great progress all of our businesses have made in the early stages of the AMP8 procurement process. Each of the bars on that chart represents an individual water company's procurement process. Thames at the top, all the way down to Irish Water at the bottom. Those that are in green show the ones where we've already secured or extended a framework.
Those in amber are the ones where we're currently bidding for a new framework, and those that are hatched in gray and green are the ones where we're in negotiations to extend an existing framework. So to date, we've secured or extended 29 frameworks into AMP8, and a lot of those run into AMP9 and beyond. So that's a really strong pipeline of work for the next 10 to 12 years, which is brilliant. And we're also bidding for tenders worth approximately GBP 150 million sales a year on top of those 29 frameworks that we've already secured.
The guys are going to give you a little bit more detail on those successes in their presentations in a minute, but hopefully, you can see just why we're so excited about the opportunity that's ahead of us in AMP8, and why we believe Renew are in a perfect position to take advantage of that. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Jamie.
Thank you, Tom, and good morning, all. I'm extremely proud to be able to give you an overview of Envolve, of what is an exciting time, both for the business and for our people, and secondly, for the opportunities with our core clients as we enter into AMP8. This presentation also falls at a very opportune time for us. Envolve now celebrating its fortieth year in the water sector. Envolve is a business founded on this heritage. Its long-term, stable frameworks have earned us our reputation as the leading water sector provider in Wales and now in the South West. We are trusted working on our clients' most strategic assets, which is aligned with our journey from Lewis, a subcontractor, a Tier 2 contractor, into a Tier 1 strategic partner.
We're still responsive and approachable for our clients, but we now provide a wider service, and this will allow us to benefit from the anticipated growth of AMP8. Envolve is based on our three core values of encourage, enhance and engage, and these are fundamental principles. They're focused primarily on our people and on our clients. Each value has a clear strategy, and these have underpinned how we show up and who we are. Our four key icons shown represent the foundation of Envolve and mandate our priorities of safety, quality, time, and cost. So what does this look like on the ground? Well, these images represent a timeline of our continual development from our core heritage in pipelines, shown in the top left. Our self-delivery capabilities now span the entire water sector, and these will be the areas you will have seen in the press lately.
If I could pull one real highlight out, is the attenuation tank that you can see in the bottom right. The small dot, which you may make out in the center, is actually one of our team within that attenuation tank. An attenuation tank basically holds back storm flows before they enter the water course. And to contextualize the size of the excavation, I'm reliably told by our engineers that this will hold 100 London buses. My second slide focuses on our framework positions secured and our further aspirations as the final sector clients come to market. Envolve held three core clients in water through AMP7, Welsh, Wessex, and Bristol Water, and all of these frameworks were to be renewed for AMP8. The graph at the top illustrates our progress to date, and I'm delighted with our progress.
In Welsh Water, we've secured Core Plus on the Major Civils Framework. This takes us through to 2030, and we achieved first place of the six successful civil partners. This assures we have priority allocation with a client whose investment plan is over 60% greater than AMP7. Secondly, we have an interest in the Network Alliance framework in Welsh Water. AMP8 should see this come out as separate lots for the first time, giving us an opportunity to bring this as an additional revenue stream with a core client. Wessex Water has been our success story of AMP7, with the only strategic partner who has constantly performed and retained our framework position, and we have an impeccable relationship and strength in this region. The major and minor civils frameworks held are both in their renewal phase, and our bid is incredibly strong.
We're very confident in securing our place through to 2035 and supporting Wessex with their capital investment plan, which is at least 70% bigger than AMP7. This brings me to the icing on the cake, South West Water. South West Water was our greatest ambition for AMP8, and with Bristol Water being owned by the same parent company, Pennon, it was not only securing South West, but protecting our Bristol Water framework. This made a business priority. Building on the success of our partnership with Network Plus and Bristol Water, we formed a JV, and this JV was successful in securing the infrastructure lot. This again takes us through to 2035, and this is with a client who is predicting a 60% larger spend in AMP8.
This success ensures Envolve, for the first time, will have full coverage of Wales and the South West. Two other very exciting growth opportunities from our come from our in-group collaborations. First, our fencing framework alongside QTS, gives one less obvious position that we've secured a framework on with Welsh Water, whilst a more natural avenue will be our collaborative plan with Enisca to provide Welsh Water a full turnkey project solution of MEICA and civil works, so the mechanical, electrical, and civil package. National Grid is our final framework opportunity. We hold a great relationship with National Grid. We've pre-qualified for the same matching footprints of our water sector covered areas, so a natural synergy there. So if we look briefly at our client business plans for AMP8, we'll hold stronger frameworks with a wider client base, which is investing more money.
We'll have an increased foothold in the addressable sectors we operate in, and this will give us every opportunity to continue our growth. So, as I'm sure you appreciate, the biggest risk to growth in today's market is delivering, and this brings me to one of the achievements I'm most proud of. In the last three years, we've not only retained, but we've recruited. We have a 38% increase in our people since 2021, and we have sector-leading retention of over 90%. We're promoting internally and organically growing to maintain what is truly unique about Envolve. So I hope I've been able to provide a useful overview of our business and the tremendous opportunity ahead that sits with us for the next decade. Thank you.
Thank you, Jaime, and morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here and to be able to give you a bit more of an insight into the Seymour brand. Seymour was established in 1978 and has over 45 years experience specializing within the water industry. Water and wastewater infrastructure has been fundamental to our origins and our growth during this period. With offices in Hartlepool, Garforth, and Sheffield, the majority of our schemes are delivered within the North East and Yorkshire regions. However, we do operate further afield. Our focus is on supporting water companies on maintenance, upgrade, and renewal projects, often working to support the upkeep of our industry's aging assets. Specifically, targeting repair and maintenance projects rather than significant capital ones, has resulted in our average scheme value this year in the water sector of circa GBP 500,000.
This is made up of everything from small, circa 60,000 packages, to much larger, circa GBP 3 million schemes. Interfacing with existing assets can be a difficult and complex environment, but one that perfectly suits our specialist direct delivery skill set. Working with our water clients to ensure this challenging interface is effectively managed, to enable our works to be undertaken while maintaining the operational integrity of their assets. As shown on screen, we undertake a variety of different works within the water sector, and I'd like to take this opportunity to just talk to you about just a couple of those. So within the treatment sector on the screen, we undertake works on phosphorus removal or what's often referred to as the P removal schemes, and this is a key issue in the treatment of wastewater and an example of regulatory-driven works in the water industry.
While there are several approaches to removal of phosphorus from wastewater, the schemes that we've been involved in so far, such as the inter-group collaboration with Enisca at the Long Lane and Cheese B ottom sewage treatment works, utilize the chemical dosing process. Flood alleviation schemes, as you can see on the bottom of the graph, are designed to protect properties and areas from the effects of flooding, and we are currently undertaking a circa GBP 6 million program of works for Yorkshire Water, to increase that stormwater capacity at 13 of their operational sites across the region that have been identified as at risk. We are responsible for developing these schemes from concept through site investigation, optioneering, detailed design, construction, and ultimately hand over back to the client.
As we move on to look at our journey and transition from AMP7 to AMP8, at the start of AMP7, we secured positions on lot 1 and 2 of the Yorkshire Water Minor Treatment Civils Framework. When this was tendered, it was a civils framework based around delivering solutions that were developed by the Yorkshire Water strategic design partner. However, through our agile approach, we have developed that offering to Yorkshire Water, and it now undertake projects right from concept, taking them through both optioneering and detailed design, as well as the construction phases, and we now offer the full disciplined approach of both civils and the MEICA work disciplines, and as such, our workload throughout AMP7 has significantly ramped up for Yorkshire Water.
As shown in the top right, we are currently bidding for the Minor Treatment Framework, which will see, again, the both of the civils and the MEICA disciplines combined. We're currently at the latter processes of this, having just recently submitted our best and final offer. This framework will see the appointment of six contractors in total, or up to six contractors, sorry. With the combining of the civils and MEICA frameworks in AMP8, in conjunction with their planned 43% increase in expenditure, we are expecting revenues to grow in this area in comparison to what we've delivered during AMP7. Northumbrian Water is an area where we had a slightly more restricted access during AMP7, and as such, we saw this as our biggest opportunity for growth within the AMP8 period.
Building on our infrastructure history with Northumbrian Water, we have managed to secure a position on the wider Ecosystem infrastructure framework, which will see the delivery of projects up to a scheme value of GBP 5 million. In taking on the experience we've gained from the Yorkshire Water treatment framework during AMP7, we've also managed to secure a position on the Northumbrian Water wider Ecosystem treatment framework, which will again see delivery of projects up to a scheme value of GBP 5 million. Each of those frameworks, sorry, have seen four contractors appointed. In addition to these two secured frameworks, which will already provide us a much greater access to Northumbrian Water in AMP8, we are also targeting the wastewater repair and maintenance framework, which is due to market imminently.
These frameworks, along with Northumbrian Water's planned 72% increase in expenditure, provides us with a significant opportunity for growth during AMP8. Severn Trent Water currently have no procurement change to their procurement strategy, and as such, our current access point remains. Once we're through these key strategic bids with Northumbrian Water, Yorkshire Water, we will continue to look for opportunities to open up growth within this sector. With Severn Trent being a bordering water company to all of the Renew brands, this is a possible SB Water collaborative target between us all.
As Tom talked about earlier, United Utilities are one of the two water companies we don't currently have access to, and given they are a bordering water company to the Seymour geographical area, it's one we're looking for a suitable entry point during AMP8 to open up that area for future growth. At Seymour, we are extremely proud of our self-delivery model. Our people are fundamental to what we do, and when we compare our headcount today compared to May 2022, we've seen over a 10% increase in direct employees, and we now have around 300 people out delivering on behalf of the Seymour brand, of which over 230 of them are in site-based roles, including our highly skilled operatives out on our sites delivering our schemes.
We have over 6% of our employees in either traineeships, apprenticeships, or graduate schemes, and this is part of our commitment to The 5% Club. We have also utilized our core water skills to diversify into adjacent markets, including National Highways and energy. Inter-group collaboration and utilizing the power of the group to unlock further opportunities is a key focus for us at Seymour, and this includes aspects such as utilizing VHE's specialisms in waste management and ground engineering to offer better value solutions to our clients during the design and build processes. As water clients look for a more joined-up approach between that civils and MEICA aspects to the mechanical and electrical aspects, we see the collaboration with Enisca as one that can enable growth within the water sector.
And this is actually one that has already proved fruitful with the two successes we've had at Northumbrian Water on their treatment and infrastructure frameworks, which were bid collaboratively with the Enisca brand. We're hopeful of shortly adding the Yorkshire Water Minor Treatment W orks to that list of collaborative successes with Enisca. Thank you very much for your time and for giving me the opportunity to talk to you, not only about some of the fantastic work we do at Seymour's, but why we are so excited about the potential growth opportunity that AMP8 offers our business. I'll now hand you over to Paul.
Thanks, Adam. Browne is now in its fourth year as a Renew company, and with the integration of Enisca, has a multidisciplinary offering, providing end-to-end services in water and wastewater. We generally operate in the southeast on infrastructure and across the U.K. and Ireland on the non-infrastructure treatment aspects of our business. The key areas of focus for us are... I suppose if you look at the columns here, on the very left-hand side, we have the design and build operations in water and wastewater infrastructure on networks for our clients. The second column from the left there is the wastewater infrastructure, repair and maintenance activities that we do through our JV, CBUL in Southern Water.
The third column reflects the treatment activities through the Enisca group, and Enisca Browne, who, going forward, will trade under the Enisca Browne brand. Then fourthly, on this column on the right-hand side, it displays the services that we provide to developers for infrastructure connections, and more recently on services for heat networks. Currently in civils, but we plan to expand that into specialist welding and the MEICA aspects of this work stream. Increasingly, we're moving towards a fully digitized operation in support of our agile production model, which under the management of our Project Management Office, or PMO, ensures cost-effective and quality outcomes for our clients.
AMP8 presents a fantastic opportunity to grow our services organically with our key clients, and with the adjacent clients to our current geographies. We're currently bidding quite a few strategic frameworks, and in the graph on the top left-hand corner, displays some of those opportunities that we're working through at the moment. The high volume Southern Water Wastewater Network Services repair and maintenance frameworks and their tankering contracts, which we are currently bidding to continue as a joint venture. This contract delivers 71,000 jobs per annum, dealing with, you know, storm events and other challenges to the wastewater networks. Also, at Southern Water, we're bidding to increase services through the low complexity design and build route schemes or otherwise known as LCDR.
That framework runs until 2033. In Affinity Water, we're combining the civil and MEICA services that we offer through Browne and Enisca, to bid for their capital enhancement and capital maintenance frameworks. This is a key target for us, and certainly, we have a really strong relationship with the client there, so we're certainly looking forward to bidding that with them. To date, we've already secured a number of frameworks across the various businesses. In Enisca, we've secured the Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water AMP8 major mechanical and electrical frameworks, which run through to 2030. In Enisca Browne, we've secured the NWG AMP8 treatment and civils framework in the Essex and Suffolk region, which contributes to the wider ecosystem frameworks that NWG run now until 2037.
In all three businesses, we've been very successful with Thames Water in securing their Runway 1 treatment medium projects frameworks. For MEICA, Enisca secured that framework. In civil, Browne secured that framework, and combined as Enisca Browne, we secured the MEICA and civil frameworks, which all run through until 2032. We've also negotiated extensions with increased volumes with some of our existing clients. With Thames Water on their area-wide geographic framework, that's been extended through to 2030, and looking at the mains renewal aspect of that, we have potential to significantly increase the volume of mains that we do for them in and around the London area and more widely across their Thames Valley regions.
In South East Water, we currently run their medium treatment and Minor Treatment Frameworks, and we've managed to extend that now for the third term, right through to 2030. So that's a full 15 years that we've had that relationship and developed it with South East Water, a very key client for us with increasing volumes throughout. We currently run a largely self-delivery model, currently, with 1,100 people employed across our work streams. Looking at AMP8 and the opportunities that we have, we recognize the challenge in resourcing that, and certainly we're looking at more innovative ways to bring new people into the industry, but also develop the talent that we have in the group. So we're looking to increase our offsite manufacturing capacity.
We currently have a factory in Northern Ireland that prepares panels and package pumping stations and booster stations, which are then taken into the U.K. on a plug-and-play basis and brought to site. We're also looking at enhancing that capacity by expanding the Northern Ireland factory, but also looking for a further center in the U.K. to increase that offering. We're looking to increase regional treatment design centers around the U.K. to augment the pre-construction activity that we do. It's a key activity for us in terms of optioneering and design to bring those projects through to delivery.
We're putting a lot of effort into our graduate program, degree apprenticeships and apprenticeships to take full advantage of a new resource coming into the industry, but also bringing some youth and energy and enthusiasm to our workforce. We are also intensifying our recruitment, but also looking at resource acquisition. So we're looking at a multifaceted way of increasing our work pool to resource the great opportunities that we have throughout. We're looking to expand the internal and external collaborations, and you've heard from my colleagues in terms of the various ways that we're looking to work together, but also supporting each other in terms of reach back to the other companies in delivering these projects.
AMP8 is a great opportunity for us, and I think we're really well set to take advantage of those opportunities going forward.
Okay, thanks, Paul. In summary then, and using a chart that's very similar to the one that you saw from Simon on rail. The scale and scope of Renew's presence in the water sector has grown considerably over recent AMPs, and the growth from AMP6 through to AMP7 is pretty spectacular. So as we head into AMP8, we've developed a unique, U.K.-wide, multidisciplinary, direct delivery, renewal, and maintenance offering to the water sector that we think positions us perfectly to get more sustainable growth and the share of our water market through the huge opportunity presented by AMP8. With that, I'm gonna pass over to Rob Phillips .
I'll appear from behind.
Thanks, Tom.
Thanks, Tom. Right. I'm here to talk to you today. My name is Rob Phillips. I'm here to talk to you today about how collaboration and growing our talent pool really is driving growth across the whole Renew group. I'm joined by John. Would you mind standing up? John Booth, our Managing Director of our AmcoGiffen business. Andrew Sharp, Managing Director of our Carnell business, and Amanda Starkey, our Group HR Director, who'll be talking to you about their particular experiences in collaboration and really driving that talent forward. You'll see that there are some very specific collaborative advantages that are brought by our unique group structure.
Combining our capabilities opens up really good new opportunities for our existing clients, where we add additional scale and geography capacity to ensure that we can actually attract and grow that real opportunity with those clients. So new frameworks, new opportunities come up. The scale that we have in the business enables us to really understand what the client's needs are and actually grow and ensure that we are securing those frameworks for our existing clients. Also, bring in real specific capability. So our civil engineering businesses may need some mechanical capability. Our mechanical businesses may need a particular capability from our civils businesses. Those businesses working together to support each other in their existing relationships with their clients really brings scale and capacity to our business. It also brings new innovation and more opportunity with new clients.
Really thinking about how we can combine the businesses, and you've heard some of those today, with the water, with the water teams, the rail teams, and you'll hear about some more in a minute, where we are bringing that real unique offering that Renew can only bring with our direct delivery model, actually, to new clients and even into new markets. All of this really does ensure how we, how we, keep revenue within the group, how that revenue is recycled and continually invested in the group. And how do we do this?
Well, on the right here, we have our Renew businesses, and we have water, and rail, and infrastructure, and also energy working groups and forums across the businesses led by our sector leaders, myself, Simon, and Tom, that are bringing real innovation, but also making our businesses think about the opportunities that their clients are offering them, think a bit differently, and allow that to be, that to be offered to the wider group, working together, grabbing that new opportunity, and really forming up, either providing support or in joint venture, growing the opportunity and the real route to market that we can bring through that. But we don't force it. One of the key things is we don't force it. It's really hard to force our MDs to do anything. We wanna make sure they're absolutely engaged, and it's right for them.
It's right for them, and it's right for their businesses. We don't want to feel like it's pushed on them because it really has to be authentic and provide additional value to our clients. To date, we've achieved over GBP 165 million of new framework opportunities that will be delivered over the next three years, that would only delivered because we've provided a new collaboration or some additional capability that Renew can bring. That's new opportunity to the group that wouldn't have been delivered without collaboration. Finally, on the right-hand side here, the collaborative best practice that we're bringing across the business. You can see commercial, finance, HR, SHEQ.
SHEQ, particularly, is a big focus of ours, where we bring in best practice, we bring our businesses together, we ensure that all the best practices is identified and really embedded across the group. And procurement, the collaborative opportunities around economies of scale, that really are driving down the cost in the businesses and making us much more competitive. But what does this mean in practice? Well, you've heard today from the water team, from the rail team, about what that does mean. But you'll see on the right here, SB Water Joint Venture, the team talked about how they've come together to look at AMP8 opportunities, how they were thinking about those, and where possible in the market, we will combine and bid for new AMP8 opportunities. And we see some of those maybe coming.
Adam talked about the opportunity in Severn Trent Water. In Envolve QTS, Jamie talked about the fact that we brought our fencing capability from QTS to the existing client relationship we have with Welsh Water, really enabling a new service to be provided by both Jamie's team, bringing QTS into the market. GBP 1 million-GBP 2 million a year, it's not huge, but it's a great opportunity that's being brought by our business working together. AmcoGiffen and Shepley, where they're working together and collaborating at Sellafield to grow our civil engineering capability into the nuclear market. Shepley's got a real deep heritage in nuclear, that real key skill set that is fantastic, but it very much focused on mechanical electrical skills at the moment, and we're wanting to see skills widened in that nuclear market.
So Amco and Shepley working together to actually get them into Sellafield, to understand the market. We're tendering for opportunities at the moment, and we see that growing outside of that in the future. Enisca Browne. We talked about Enisca Browne. Paul talked about the Enisca Browne business before, and that's the MEICA, as he calls it, so mechanical, electrical, and control systems being provided to the South East Water businesses, and that's bringing the Enisca business, which has got a really good skill set in mechanical electrical, and actually combining it with the Browne business, which is a very geographically focused in that southeast, ensuring that the client relationship is fully understood, and that we really are providing additional value by bringing those skill sets together. And finally... Oh, not finally, sorry.
I've got Enisca Seymour one as well in there. So Enisca Seymour and Enisca Envolve. Again, you heard from, from Jamie and from, Adam earlier about the, Enisca Seymour, Enisca Envolve opportunities, where all- both of those sets of businesses have frameworks in those regions, are coming together to make sure that they can provide the best value service to that client and also ensure that we secure more of the market. But the final one is, probably quite local today to what we're doing. Up in the regions of Scotland, there is a pretty poor service of mobile, broadband and, phone signal. So there's a big investment program sponsored by DCMS that Ian, his team from Clarke, are delivering, which is, drawing on the skills of QTS.
QTS, very used to working in Scotland in remote environments, bring that civil engineering capability and bring a real support to Ian's team to allow him to focus on delivering his core skills, which is mobile service and network management. So that's pretty much enough from me. I'll now hand on to John, who will talk you through our ARQ business, our most successful collaboration to date in the group.
Good morning, everybody. As Rob said, my name is John Booth. I'm the managing director of AmcoGiffen. So currently, around 40% of the U.K. rail network is electrified, which is far less than comparable European countries, which are typically 60% and above in terms of electrification. Now, electrified railways are shown to benefit passengers and the wider traveling public. I think we're all familiar that it's better for the environment, with lower emissions than those from diesel trains, but they're also quieter, reducing noise pollution for those living and working near the tracks, and it also reduces noise and vibration for passengers. Electric trains cost less in terms of whole lifecycle costs, and they also improve journey times, as braking and acceleration is far more efficient. They're also lighter, which reduces the wear and the tear on the existing infrastructure, particularly the track.
However, it's also fair to say that, there have been cost and delivery issues, notably Great Western, North West electrification programs, and the industry recognized, and there are a lot of published, papers on this topic, that the cost of electrification just wasn't sustainable, and this had to be addressed to enable programs such as Midland Mainline, TransPennine, and Scotland's Railway to continue. So we realized that with our existing self-delivery capabilities, that if we added overhead line capability as well, that we could form a compelling offering, and hence the acquisition of REL back in 2021. So ARQ, so that's AmcoGiffen, REL, and QTS, was formed to respond to that industry challenge, but also to widen our offering within the rail industry. Now currently, and traditionally, Network Rail will engage with a specialist OLE contractor to deliver electrification works.
What that OLE contractor will do is subcontract out the non-OLE work. Actually, within an OLE electrification scheme, only 20% of that scheme is actually overhead line electrification work. So therefore, the remaining 80%, when subcontracted out by those businesses, just adds an extra layer of overhead and profit and an extra layer of management that, as ARQ, we remove, and that can have a dramatic impact. So on a GBP 50 million electrification scheme, you can be talking up to a GBP 10 million saving that we can, that we can offer. So our AR, ARQ model delivers an efficient, innovative, and agile solution. It eliminates those non-productive costs by bringing together in-house three rail businesses to self-deliver those disciplines.
This graphic just illustrates the different disciplines within an electrification scheme and how those three businesses work together, as I say, to self-deliver the various elements. Currently today, ARQ has been successful. We've just started work on the E&P and the OLE framework that we've just won in Wales and West for CP7, and we're also currently working on our bid to electrify Scotland's network over the next control period also. Thank you.
Thank you, John. Good morning. I'm Andrew Sharp, the managing director at Carnell, and today I'm going to talk through a little bit about our highways collaboration, AGC. AGC is a joint venture between AmcoGiffen and Carnell, hence the name AGC. So firstly, why did we choose to collaborate? Well, Carnell were already established in the critical highway maintenance sector and recognized as a strategic supplier for National Highways, providing drainage, civil engineering, technology and lighting, and asset management services. The six-year Scheme Delivery Framework, or SDF, which was tendered in 2021 by National Highways, provided the opportunity for us to organically grow and enter a new submarket with National Highways. Now, in the past, Carnell had delivered safety barrier work as part of wider civil engineering projects using specialist subcontractors, but we'd never delivered this scope as the prime provider.
Recognizing the early signs that National Highways were already shifting focus to more maintenance and renewal-based programs in RIS 3 and RIS 4, so that's the Road Investment Strategy periods for the next two periods, which run from 2025 to 2035, the expansion of our capability into safety barrier made strategic sense. Secondly, what value did we unlock by doing this? Well, combining the highway skills and client understanding of Carnell with the scale and the structural engineering capabilities of AmcoGiffen from Rail, provided a really compelling offering for National Highways. So we were delighted when our carefully crafted quality and price submission secured three lots on the six-year SDF, the Scheme Delivery Framework. And of 51 successful suppliers on that framework, we were the only joint venture to win a place.
These three lots across the northwest, northeast, Midlands, and east regions in England provided GBP 84 million of new work for AGC, actually making us the second biggest provider of barrier to National Highways. Thirdly, who are we targeting through this joint venture? Well, we started our first projects on the ground with National Highways in 2022, and in our first two years, it's fair to say we've become a trusted delivery partner for National Highways. That trust has been built on successful delivery of more technically challenging projects, more complex projects, with, for example, more extensive temporary works and rail possessions, which I'll show you more detail about in a moment. In this last year, AGC have also been successful in securing work outside National Highways for a number of new clients.
Our AGC management team, drawn from AmcoGiffen and Carnell, have developed a proactive strategy, what we call our roadmap for success, to turbocharge the work-winning ability of the JV and to unlock new revenue based on our combined strengths. Now here are a couple of examples of completed AGC projects for National Highways, showing the success and the value of the collaboration. On the right, the M69 VRS, so it's Vehicle Restraint System. This risk reduction project was our first major barrier project in the Midlands region and valued at around GBP 1.9 million. On this project, we adopted our find and fix approach, where our experienced teams surveyed nearly 31 km of barrier on the M69, identifying safety critical defects and then putting forward proposals to remedy these.
The dynamic nature of the scope of this scheme relied on close collaboration with the client day-to-day to agree the extent of repairs and the agile management with our material suppliers to ensure just-in-time stock delivery. You can see some of the extent of repairs there. For example, 4,000 m of single-sided tension corrugated beam, which is the barrier in the middle of the motorway, and 4,500 posts replaced over that length, along with 24 km of retensioning. The added value that AGC brought here was extending that trusted find and fix approach, which Carnell had already embedded with National Highways, managing the drainage asset and bringing that to the safety barrier asset.
This maximized efficiency, risk reduction for the client, but also crucially, contributing to our environmental objectives to reduce carbon through waste reduction and minimizing the use of new materials by only replacing what was necessary. The second project on the right, the A180 Railway Triangle project. This was a road over rail project delivered in the Yorkshire region and valued at around GBP 1.1 million. Now, this project had been in National Highways challenging pile for some time, and again, you can see some of the extents there, four 60 m parapets, 2.2 m high, and what is called high containment levels because of the road over rail nature.
Such was the confidence that National Highways had in our ability to deliver, that while we were on site, the scope of the project was increased by adding 800 m of additional barrier renewal on approach to the parapets. The added value the AGC brought here was the expertise of AmcoGiffen in managing the rail interface, with nine separate rail possessions and AGC being able to provide the Network Rail approved CRE, or Contractor's Responsible Engineer, as well as managing the extensive temporary works designs. On this particular project, I received direct feedback from the regional director for National Highways. This project had been on his radar as a potential problem project, and it went more smoothly than he could ever have imagined. That's a brief overview of AGC, our highways collaboration and the value it's delivering for clients already.
Now I'd like to hand you over to Amanda.
Thank you, Andrew. Morning, everybody. I'm Amanda Starkey, the Group's HR Director. After seeing the Group's growth plans and how we collaborate strongly to maximize the skills across our group, I think it's important for me to give you an understanding of our strategic approach to talent attraction, and then how we retain and develop our people. With a challenging external market, recruitment market specifically, and the skills in our industry being in high demand, our strategic approach is not only to procure best-in-class talent across all levels, but also to develop a pipeline of talent to feed our succession plan needs. Whether early, mid, or late careers, we believe that every employee's career pathway and aspirations are different. We address this by offering each employee the ability to follow a development journey that's right for them.
The graphic that you can see illustrates the employee journey that as a group and within the individual brands, we offer to our people. The journey begins at the point when an employee joins the business. Our differentiated approach to recruitment creates flexibility and means that each brand can create a recruitment strategy that specifically suits their business and sector, partnering with experts in the field, as well as internal resources to lead on these recruitment strategies. In addition to that flexibility, we're also able to leverage the group's scale and broad-ranging geography to attract the best candidates, such as when we're recruiting employees into our early careers and emerging talent programs.
A mixture of scale and a differentiated approach to recruiting and onboarding new talent, along with delivering on our Investors in Diversity commitments, creates an inclusive and attractive organization that is attractive in the employment market, and that our engagement surveys tell us people want to work for. Employees join our businesses at various stages of their careers. No matter where they are on their career pathways, once on board, it's our responsibility to ensure that every employee is offered the most appropriate development for their own needs. Doing this creates the basis for our retention strategy, which has its foundation in the provision of an inclusive and psychologically safe place to work, complemented by a suite of development programs to fit all needs.
Creating a variety of career routes ensures that we apply an inclusive approach to the development of our people, which maximizes their strengths and subsequently delivers against our business plans. This approach is important to us at all levels of any employee's career, but particularly in the emerging talent and early career space, as this is the pipeline of future talent that builds into our succession plans. Early careers and emerging talent encompasses apprentices, both craft and degree, placement students, graduates, and all those in training roles, such as those looking to upskill or reskill. As we move into 2025, we'll have 400 early career colleagues across our group, and at close to 10% of our headcount, this commitment to our future talent pipeline creates resilience in our workforce and builds a future-ready employee base.
As those individuals journey through their careers, they are offered a variety of development opportunities, including our technical academies, such as the Cost Academy, our frontline leader programs, such as Management 101-
... and the potential to join our centrally delivered leadership and executive management programs. This development ultimately embeds the succession plans that are within our brands and across the group, and this entire approach allows us to recruit and retain best-in-class, creating strength and depth to support the ongoing growth of the group. Thank you. I'll hand over to Paul to close.
Thank you, Amanda, and, thank you, team. It's amazing, isn't it? When I look at the eyes of, my colleagues in extreme weather conditions, you see the pounds rolling over. And of course, it should be remembered at times like this, when it's hammering down out there, the vast majority of our operations, we will have 3,000 people out there delivering service in this. You know, it's what we do 24/7. And it's an important, point to make. So I'm now gonna wrap up the, the briefing session. In my opinion, the U.K. has no option than to continue to commit to long-term infrastructure, investment. We remain ambivalent to the outcome of the July election, and I can honestly say that our clients are feeling exactly the same way.
As we've amplified in the sector briefings, our largest clients have made very clear declarations around an increased focus on renewing and maintaining their networks. Of course, funding is underpinned by climate action as well as regulatory and now legal obligation and pressure. As you've heard, we're making excellent progress with renewing and extending key frameworks across our sectors. We're leveraging those synergies and the collaborative potential of our ever-expanding range of capabilities and brands. We're making significant investments, as Amanda's just alluded to, in our talent pool and resources for the future. We can report positive momentum as we move into the second half of our year, and we very much look forward with confidence to reporting to the market on our further progress. Thank you for listening to the sessions.
I'm now gonna hand to Lisa, who's going to facilitate a Q&A session.
Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. A couple of questions, if I may. Starting in rail, what is the direct delivery resource in that across those brands, and what is the current level of staff retention? And then, in terms of that resource, is it allocated to delivering specific frameworks, or is it effectively a common resource, which then can be managed to maximize sort of the utilization returns, et cetera? And then secondly, in water, you flagged there's GBP 150 million worth of AMP8 tenders out there. Roughly how much of that is growth, either expansion of AMP7 going into AMP8 on work you already have, as opposed to new frameworks to the business? Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. I think, Simon, if you take the first part of that question, please.
Yeah, thank you. I'll start with rail. So in terms of the strength of the team in rail, it's broadly 2,000 people, based across the U.K.. In terms of self-delivery, probably around 60% self-delivery, but then on top of that as well, we use predominantly our own plant and equipment. We have a regional presence, but we also have capabilities that we are agile in terms of how we deploy those nationally. So I think we've got a really good blend of, if you like, local labor force, and then national coverage in terms of moving that expertise around. And you'll have seen the slide earlier with the depots and the office presence around the U.K.. That's great in terms of versatility.
And then the second part of the question, Simon, was around resource being allocated to frameworks.
Sorry, again.
Resource allocated to... Is it allocated to frameworks, or is it spread around?
Well, in terms of frameworks, in terms of maintenance, we commit resource to frameworks. People are based on frameworks locally, but if we need to, we've got specialist teams that move around the U.K. and wherever they're needed.
Great. Thanks, Simon. Tom, are you okay to pick up?
Yeah, water.
Yeah.
So, the simple answer to, to that is about 50% of that GBP 150 million is replacing frameworks we've currently got, taking them into AMP8 and beyond. But the other 50% is for new. Now, they may be with existing clients, so if you take Affinity as an example, we've currently got a civils framework with them that we're looking to extend, but now we're also increasing the, the size of the wallet that we've got from that particular client, by looking at the M&E capable framework as well. So it's a mixture of both, but about 50/50.
Great. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Andrew. Does anyone else have a question? Oh, great. Thank you.
Thanks. Morning, it's James Brand from Deutsche Bank. I've got a couple of questions. On rail, you flagged that Network Rail are planning to make nearly GBP 4 billion of efficiency savings over the course of CP7. Where would you expect those efficiency savings to come from, and to what extent could that potentially place pressure on your margins over the next five years within the, within the rail segment? And then second question is, is, you know, going back to the, the, the discussion around your, your employee base, how much value do your customers place on, I guess, sort of social value, use of apprentices, trainees on, on frameworks?
And to what extent do you expect that to change, become more prevalent in discussions over the course of the next five, 10 years? And how much resource do you have to grow your apprenticeship training scheme?
... capacity as it stands?
Yeah, so in terms of the GBP 3 billion efficiencies that are going to be achieved over the next five years, well, we heard some good examples. John gave a great example with, ARQ and combining that skill set and removing a layer of overhead and profit, you know, can be in the order of 20%, you know, GBP 10 million on GBP 50 million. So great examples like that. The plant that hopefully we're gonna see, if the weather clears up, can sometimes halve the time of operations. That means half the plant, half the transportation. We're developing things, the chippers and logging for biodiversity. It means you're not even taking the materials away. So all these sort of things, and it all adds up to continuing efficiencies and savings.
I think it's fair to say we've probably got one of the strongest track records in identifying those efficiencies, whether it's in repeat maintenance activities or in the schemes that we embark on in influencing the design. And we have so many because we've got such a strong labor force that, you know, have been with the business and in rail for so long, a lot of those great ideas and those innovations come from the ground. Because we've got the culture where people have a voice and can make a difference, those ideas are driven and the teams and the people get the benefits and see that as well, and that just builds the passion around continually wanting to look for efficiencies and savings.
So, to answer the question, we share those savings and it's an opportunity for us. Will it impact on our ability? Well, I think if clients, through Network Rail, don't meet those savings targets, it's probably the capital investment, the enhancements that suffer, but not the maintenance. Because as you've seen and, you know, and felt with the weather, we can't stop because of inefficiencies. So it's other pots that take that hit. In terms of the skills, I don't know, Amanda, whether you wanna pick up on the social value?
Sorry, I think Sean was just going to jump in a little bit on margin, if that's okay first.
Hi, James. Yeah, just to be very clear, we're not expecting any deterioration in our margins. I think while there is a, you know, a drive across all of our sectors to improve efficiency and work smarter, the way that we do that is by getting closer to our clients, understanding their needs better, working with them to prioritize, get a better visibility over the work bank, which enables us to operate more efficiently and productively. So, you know, there is pressure, but we've got ways and means of dealing with it to maintain the margins.
Great. Thanks, Sean. So the second question there that James had was around,
I think social value.
Social value and apprenticeships and, you know, the value of our employees, so.
I'll ask the first part, answer the first part of the question, and I'll pass on to Amanda to answer the second. So social value, and is it really being used by our clients? Well, a lot of our clients are government-backed organizations which have a mandatory requirement to include social value. I, Tom, Simon, and all of our managing director colleagues are involved in reviewing tenders pretty much every week, and every week, we are writing responses that require us to take on graduates, to maintain a social value program in our businesses, to really give back to society in a very different way than was expected 10 years ago. And it is something that's really core to our business. We, we really do wanna leave behind a lasting legacy, and we really wanna do grow those apprenticeships.
Amanda will talk to you about how we are... I've got 400, I think you saw on a slide, 400 graduate and early careers opportunities currently in the business, so we're growing from the ground up.
Yeah, I think, you know, the piece around whether it's a requirement from the client is an absolute. It's an industry requirement. The investment that we make, the passion that we put into bringing those early careers, emerging talent colleagues through our pipeline of various development programs, is absolutely the way we feed the ongoing skills of our organization.
I think just to close the response to that question, you've heard today about a lot of framework success. What we're all encouraged by is the fact that clients in their evaluation criteria are still weighting it in the bias towards compliance, the technical ability, your strength in depth, your ability to demonstrate how you're gonna respond to the challenges through these frameworks rather than cost. We are very rarely valued on our cost. The weightings are still typically 70%, 30% weighted towards the compliance, technical ability perspective, including social value, sustainability, and many of those good attributes.
Great. Thank you, Paul. Thanks, James. Anyone else? Yes, sir. Just third row back, if you wanna... Thank you.
Hi, Stephen Wood from Close Brothers. Just two questions. One, in water, there's obviously a significantly expanded opportunity, which is fantastic. What's the spending pattern of those AMP cycles like? And then secondly, we heard a lot about, you know, the water and the rail. We've not really heard very much about the energy opportunity, so I don't know if you could expand a bit more on, on that, and the group's sort of ambitions there. Thank you.
Perfect. Thanks, Stephen. Tom, do you want to take the first one?
Yeah. So traditionally, the AMP cycles have sort of started a little bit slowly as they transfer to new frameworks, pick up in the middle, and then slow down a little bit at the end as they transition into the next one. And there'll be an element of that this time round, but I think the drop-off at the start of the framework will be a little bit slower than we've seen in the past, mainly because of some of those really important initiatives that are out there around storm overflow control, you know, water quality. Those things have started now, and the water companies have had no choice but to start investing early.
So I think we'll see a much less of a drop-off as we go into this amp cycle, but it will still flatten off a little bit.
Just, and just to add to that, before you-
You go, Rob. What we've been saying for a little while is obviously there's a huge opportunity coming ahead of us in AMP8. But really, in terms of, you know, seeing that filter through to our numbers, we're not really expecting that to happen in any sort of meaningful way, probably until 2026, so our FY 2026. Next year is gonna be the start of the AMP cycle. We're not expecting the numbers to go backwards at all. We'll be fairly flat across water in that first year, and then thereafter, we'll start to see that growth. But we have to, we have to resource it up, and we need the, the programs to start before you'll see that in the numbers.
Perfect. Thanks, Sean. Rob?
Thank you. And yes, we did sort of take on board the fact that we weren't talking to you a lot about water and well, we talked a lot about water and rail and not about anything else today. So in your brochures, you will have some key information about the opportunities that exist in all of our markets. In energy, particularly, we do see a growth potential in our existing sort of area of nuclear. The work that we're doing at Sellafield is continuing to grow, and there's a very long-term, stable relationship there with the client, but also government to ensure that that funding keeps coming. They've got GBP 130 billion to spend over the next 120 years keeping that site running.
So it's absolutely vital that we keep investing in that site, and we have a really key part to play in that. But also in other new nuclear projects, such as Hinkley and Sizewell, there are opportunities there. One of the big areas is also the opportunity to look at new manufacture of nuclear fuel, so the support to the old heritage that U.K. had in one of the first sort of nuclear fuel cycle processes. At Springfields in Preston, where we're quite active, there's investment there. We see investment down at Urenco, just outside of Chester, where they actually enrich nuclear fuel, and eventually, the SMR program will come along.
But also, Paul's probably put on his slide the pieces of work we're thinking about in our M&A space. So in the transmission distribution area, where that's certainly a certain area of focus, there's a huge investment there, GBP 22.2 billion being invested by National Grid on, sort of by the, the DNOs, and also a huge investment by National Grid and the Scottish National Grids in the, the sort of green increase in electricity that's gonna be needed to deliver Net Zero 2050. And then finally, renewables. We're certainly have an interest there, and, we're keeping an open mind on, our, our approach to that market over the next couple of years.
Great. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, very much. Stephen, next question? Oh, see there's just a gentleman there. Just... Thank you.
Thank you. Tom Fraine from Shore Capital. In the past, you've had a good record of identifying markets in which there's set to be a big increase in spend. Given that water's gonna be, you know, significantly higher in terms of the percentage uplift in the new framework versus rail, would we probably expect more investment in water? And, or do you see sorts of decent growth opportunities into different segments or market share, market share gain opportunities in rail, specifically?
Okay, thanks, Tom. Sean?
So where are we looking to invest? I think it's probably fair to say that rail isn't an area where we're looking to do any new significant M&A activity. As we've already mentioned, we are the largest maintenance renewals contractor by some margin in the U.K. already, and so there's limited scope to grow that much more through an acquisition. There are some niche areas of rail where there's certain skill sets, certain types of products, certain things we can bring to the market that we don't currently have, that we might look to do as a bolt-on type acquisition, but that would be the extent of the activity in rail.
Across our existing sectors, water is obviously extremely attractive because, you know, we're talking about AMP8, but it's gonna be AMP9, AMP10, AMP11, where we're gonna see this huge increase in investment over the next 20 or so years. So we're very keen to continue to invest in water. Obviously, we acquired Enisca, which Paul talked about earlier, which gave us some MEICA capability in the water space. So previously, we were doing predominantly civils work. That's massively broadened our capability in that area, and there are other areas that we're continuing to look at, both in broadening our geography, so you would have picked up on the various maps that we've shown, that we don't work in Scotland, and we don't work for United Utilities in the Northwest.
So we'd like to break into those markets, and there are other skill sets and engineering capabilities that we can also acquire and develop and grow into. Outside of our existing markets, the areas we're really interested in, Tom just touched on it - sorry, Rob just touched on it a moment ago, is transmission and distribution, or, you know, we see that as a huge, huge opportunity. The grid and the distribution network have been significantly underinvested for many, many years.
And then when you throw into the mix that we are generating our electricity in different places, in different ways, the requirements on the grid, the burden on the grid is gonna increase dramatically over the coming years as we shift towards renewables, electric vehicles, battery storage, and so on. And the grid, it just cannot cope in its current form. So tens of billions GBP needs to be spent upgrading the grid, reinforcing what exists, and expanding it. And there's a limited number of contractors out there that have the capability and the tickets to do that work, and this is an area we see as a huge growth priority for us, too.
Hi, guys. James Bayliss from Berenberg. Two questions, if I may. On the slides, you've got some pretty impressive numbers out there in terms of the total market opportunity for Renew, and clearly, that's something you're going after both organically and through acquisitions. Can you just give us a sense of how we should be thinking about realistic ambition in terms of market share? Is that something, given the nature of end markets and the service offering, does that change how we should be thinking about competition and regulatory control on that front? Does that then impact, you know, how you approach M&A? And then secondly, referring back to that, that sheer scale of the opportunity out there, you talk around the fact you've got 10% of your workforce in early career placements to support future growth for the business.
Is that enough organically to allow you to address the demand opportunity out there, or, or should you be looking to also consider the likes of M&A to really get the supply in to, to meet the demand out there for you?
Okay.
Thanks, James. Sean, do you want to take the first one?
Yeah, sure. The competition, so look, realistically, we-- there's GBP 31 billion being spent in maintenance renewals activity in rail, and we're, you know, we're heading towards GBP 500 million a year of that, so we're sub 10% of the total market. So and that's probably the market where we have the greatest market share. So we're not running into any Competition Commission-type issues at the moment, albeit, you know, as we already talked about, in rail, we are large, so if we were to buy anything else substantial, that could potentially trigger that, hence why that's not a priority for us. I don't think it's an issue in any of the other markets. These markets are just so vast, and while we are growing, there's a huge opportunity for us to grow even further.
You know, we still have proportionately a relatively small market share, and that's why we're excited about the opportunity, because, you know, the markets are growing. We have a relatively small market share. We have the ability to significantly increase that market share in those markets that are growing in their own right anyways. That's a huge opportunity for us. Just, I'll do a little bit of the second piece and then hand over to Paul to talk about the organic bit. We have talked about in our M&A strategy around, you know, it's both about buying capability and capacity. So the acquisition of TIS, which Paul talked about briefly in only a slide earlier, that is a great example of us buying additional capacity. That's doubled our nuclear manufacturing capacity, which facilitates our site service operations.
It's an important part of what we do, and we'll be looking to do that across our other sectors, too.
Are we doing enough, James? It's a great question. We're asking ourselves that every single day, every week, in reality. I think it starts with, as Amanda articulated, retaining people. Our staff retention rates are in a pretty good place. We watch those very closely. Being an attractive employer, making sure we don't lose people to our competitor is the starting point. We describe this challenge as being multifaceted. Retain people, first of all, become attractive to a wider, more diverse audience, the work that Amanda fully amplified. And in reality, taking people from competitors, it's the nature of what we do.
I think, those news headlines around the cancellation of HS2, the northern leg in particular, whilst disappointing to some, actually, freed the market up a little bit, took a little bit of pressure out of the labor market, and we've taken some advantage from that. I think one thing that we're extremely proud to offer is longevity. For somebody wanting to develop a career, we're not a projects business, as we fully amplified. We don't start this week and end in 10 weeks' time. That is not Renew. We're able to offer these long-term development programs that are really attractive to a certain cohort. So we, you know, we, compete very well in the, in the labor market.
Lewis Roxburgh from Investec. There's a lot of interesting businesses presented today. I was just wondering what the kind of degree of collaboration is between these businesses, whether it be sharing knowledge or potentially sharing work and capturing those synergies.
Okay, yeah. So, I mean, the shared knowledge, I think we talked about the ability to bring that best practice across the group companies, so we do have a central coordination of that. We ensure that HR, et cetera, our SHEQ and our work winning all have that shared knowledge and experience that we're bringing from all the companies. So we pick it up, we bring it to the center, we work together on it, and then we make sure it's fed back out into the companies. Also, within our group forums, where Simon, I, Tom, and the MDs look at those opportunities with our existing customers and with our future potential customers, we do say, "Look, this is something that's not interesting because it's not civil engineering.
We don't do civil engineering." With it, some of the companies that have an M&E opportunity in the civil engineering market, that previously, four or five years ago, may have turned it down. Whereas now we say, "Well, hold on, we've got an M&E business within the group. Why don't we actually do something different, pair them up with one of our sort of companies who is really aligned to that market and really get that sort of additional competitive advantage?" So I think, absolutely, we're doing a huge amount of work on it. It's something that we're, particularly, the three of us sit out here at the front, are focused on every day. But I wanted to make the point again, we don't force it either.
We really don't want to push those MDs into making those decisions for the wrong reasons, just because we're asking them to. We want them to want it, to think, and to know that their clients really do want it and see the opportunity for them.
I'll just add very briefly to that. In addition to the areas that you've already heard about of us collaborating businesses together to hit frameworks, what we're doing more and more of is sharing knowledge and best practice, particularly those bits that aren't technically specific to a particular market. So we have a system called Vault, where all of the businesses can share good practice around bidding capabilities, about case studies, social value examples, just some really good bits that allow us just to share that knowledge and information and improve the offering that we have in a different sector. So as well as working together out on site, we're collaborating a lot more, particularly in the early pre-construction stages.
Great. Thanks very much, Tom. Thank you, Lewis. That'll conclude our Q&A session for the day.