Before the ITN is issued the Authority must decide whether:
5.3.1 It wishes to apply standard financial terms and pricing to each bid; or
5.3.2 The bidder will be given the freedom to predict the terms upon which it believes finance can be made available for its bid.
The Authority will be guided by its financial advisor on these matters but it may be appropriate to apply standard financial terms for projects where:
■ analogous projects in the same sector have already been successfully delivered by a range of bidders;
■ the likelihood of procuring senior debt finance is not in question;
■ the project is not novel, complex, large or likely to involve non-traditional funding sources;
■ experience on successive projects has shown that the terms of senior debt finance are reasonably predictable and therefore the Authority's advisors should be able to anticipate the terms and margins of senior debt; and
■ Innovation in financial structuring is unlikely. (However, standard terms should not prevent new ideas being proposed by a bidder and its financial advisor or introduced by a lender as part of the PBDFC process).