The responsibility to manage and maintain the Forth Road Bridge and the new Queensferry Crossing is to be awarded to Amey.
It will be in charge of the crossings and the adjacent trunk roads from June 1 2015, with the contract due to be formally signed before Christmas.
The Queensferry Crossing is due to open in 2016. The company will provide special unit to run the bridges within the Scottish Trunk Road Network.
Minister for Transport and Islands Derek Mackay said: "The trunk toad network is essential for people to commute, and for goods and services to be delivered across Scotland, and there will be few more visible examples of these connections than the bridges across the Forth, which will unite north-east Scotland, Fife, the Lothians and the central belt."
He said the government is spending £677.7 million in the 2015/16 financial year on trunk roads and motorways. Part of the deal will see local small and medium-sized enterprises given a role in the work. There will also be training and employment initiatives, as well as educational and charitable contributions by Amey.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article