Education specialist RM has signed a contract expected to be worth £4m to provide IT services in Southwark Council's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

In May last year, RM, the council, BSF Investments and construction services giant Balfour Beatty formed the 4 Futures partnership to deliver and manage BSF projects across the London borough. RM has now signed a contract covering Phase 2a of the programme, which will see projects undertaken at four schools.

The projects are just a few of the many that had been left up in the air by the government's decision to axe the BSF scheme. The signing of the contract means the deals have now reached "financial close", guaranteeing RM revenue of about £4m.

In July this year, all-new spending on the BSF project was frozen; the 14 projects that had reached preferred bidder status facing a case-by-case review. RM is among these preferred bidders.

At the time, education secretary Michael Gove addressed Parliament announced that his department was slashing its end year flexibility requirement to carry over unused budget by £1bn in 2010/11. This meant excising £156.5m from capital budgets "where commitments [were] no longer affordable".

Axing the BSF scheme meant the immediate cancellation of 715 school-rebuilding or -refurbishing projects. Projects underway or having " reached financial close" will still go ahead.