A revised tender for a £1 billion project to build carriages for Crossrail will be published this week, following the scrapping of the private finance initiative that was supposed to provide funding.
While the PFI was perceived as favouring financially-strong Siemens, the move to a publicly-funded project is expected to offer each of the four bidders (Siemens; Bombardier; Hitachi; and CAF) equal chances to succeed.
Winning this contract seems to be particularly critical to Bombardier, which owns the last operating train manufacturing facility in the UK and employs about 1,600 people there.
The 73-mile Crossrail line will connect Heathrow airport to Canary Wharf and Shenfield, Essex. It is expected to open in 2018.
Crossrail will select a bidder next year.
