Search Mobile

collapse

already registered?

Please sign in with your existing account details.

Email address

Password

need to register?

Register to access exclusive content, sign up to receive our updates and personalise your experience on brownejacobson.com.

Privacy statement - Terms and conditions

Forgotten your password?

collapseSign

Home

Insights

Resources

Blogs

Trains calculations and procurement flaws

Trains, calculations and procurement flaws

3 October 2012

The Department for Transport’s (DfT) decision to abandon awarding the West Coast Main Line rail franchise to FirstGroup highlights the difficulties of running major procurements and in particular evaluating bids.

The financial modelling used to evaluate the financial promises made by bidders here would have been extremely complex. However, even in simpler procurements, contracting authorities should take time to ensure the evaluation scheme they use actually works before being sent to the market.

Running a test set of information through marking schemes will often throw out any difficulties before you get the real information from bidders. Checking and effectively moderating the evaluation carried out must be done before releasing the decisions to bidders. Building in time for effective moderation will be time well spent in the long run.

This has proved an expensive mistake for the DfT which other contracting authorities should learn from. Procurement challenges are not just time consuming and costly but if successful can also bring considerable political discomfort to those involved.

Related opinions

Flexible working, childcare and indirect sex discrimination – important reminder

The courts have long recognised that, on a societal level, women bear a greater burden of childcare responsibilities than men which can make it more difficult for women to comply with employer requirements for flexible working (known as the ‘childcare disparity’).

View blog

Directors who fail to prepare, should prepare to fail

Two recent judgments demonstrate the risk that directors (of insolvent companies) face of being personally liable if appropriate records and procedures are not followed and if it cannot be shown that certain payments were in the interests of the company.

View blog

Impact of Covid-19 upon level of fine

Two cases have considered the issue of Covid 19 as part of the sentencing exercise. In the most recent, failures by a principal contractor Modus Workspace, who design and refit refurbishments, led to a £1.1 million fine after an engineer was injured from a fall from a roof.

View blog

Supreme Court awards compensation to a Professor for an invention created during his employment

A recent decision by the Supreme Court in Shanks v Unilever PLC has supported the right for employees to receive compensation for patented inventions if the invention is of ‘outstanding benefit’.

View blog

View all blogs