Commercial opportunities to exploit surplus land further reduced the effectiveness of the competition

2.13  One of the Department's objectives for the project was to consolidate the NPL on to a smaller site, with the result that it would release surplus land. The opportunity to exploit this land commercially complemented a driving feature of the PFI philosophy, commercial exploitation of redundancy in the public sector's assets. The Department therefore encouraged bidders to consider opportunities to develop the surplus land, in the expectation that successful development would reduce the charges it would have to pay.

9

Ten parties expressed interest in the NPL PFI project and the Department short-listed four

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Consortium Name

Design

Construction

Facilities Management

Commercial Developers

Residential Developers

Project Management

Legal

Financial

Engineers

Surveyors

 

 

Short listed bidders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teddington Technology Park

 

Costain

Procord

 

Berkeley Homes

Ove Arup

Berwin Leighton

Sumitomo Bank

 

 

 

 

Osborne

RMJM/ John Thompson

Amec

Building & Property FM

Argent/Trevor Osborne

 

Hawk Development

Charles Russell

Smith Williamson

Oscar Faber

Davis, Langdon & Everest

 

 

Laser

Percy Thomas

John Laing

Serco

 

John Laing

John Laing

Rowe & Maw

 

Whitby & Bird Roger Preston

 

 

 

Beazer Homes & Balfour Beatly

 

Balfour Beatly

 

 

Beazer Homes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other parties that expressed their interest in the NPL project

 

 

Shepherd

Sheppard Robson

Shepherd

DSSD

 

 

 

 

Deutsche Morgan Grenfell

 

 

 

 

Laing, London & Regional

 

John Laing

 

London & Regional

John Laing

John Laing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kyle Stewart

 

Kyle Stewart

Serco

Kyle Stewart

 

 

 

 

Thorburn Colquhoun

Kinney & Green

 

 

Drake & Scull

Halpern Partnership

Drake & Scull

Drake & Scull

 

Lawson Price

Arnold Project Services

 

Northcroft/ Daiwa Bank

DSSR/ Hyder

 

 

 

Manly

GMW Partnership

 

 

Manly

 

Manly

 

Manly

Kerr & Tucker

 

 

 

Symonds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symonds

 

 

 

Source: The Department

 

2.14  The opportunity to develop surplus land encouraged the bidders to look beyond the design and construction of the new laboratories towards maximising development potential. While Laser discussed the technical requirements for the new laboratories with the scientists before submitting its bid, Osborne did not. The Department's evaluation of the resulting bids concluded that Osborne's bid was so poor that Osborne hardly merited being considered as a reserve bidder. Since there were only two bidders left at this stage, the Department therefore had little scope to use competitive tension to encourage Laser to improve the technical quality of its bid.