Flying Scotsman

Depends on how the tender was written

 

On the contrary - the whole point of a procurement exercise is to find the best bid. If the Northern Steam was better according to the scoring criteria the NRM set then quite rightly they won the bid; and the contract with Riley's ends. So the question is what were the criteria (which would typically be some weighted combination of ability to meet desired outcomes and costs).

If you invariably just kept rolling contracts over to the incumbent, there would be no incentive for anyone else ever to bid; and no incentive for incumbents to try to deliver efficiently and cost effectively.

Tom

 

Higher bid? Insofar as I can guess what this rather peculiar contract looks like (and I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would bid at all, but on the basis that someone did, any financial element was presumably on a cost plus basis), the cash seems likely to flow the other way.

 

Unless there is evidence, this is all speculation. Obviously there are various scenarios --- they did bid, they didn't bid (why?).

I have been involved in many bids, some you win, some you lose. In bidding for work in the private sector, my experience has been that anything goes in terms of formal process. If the NRM had been a private sector company, what you say might be true if that was the way the buyer decided to play it. A one to one deal could have been done, more or less a handshake and sort the paperwork out.

In the public sector, no way. You write a request for proposals, you state the award criteria, you advertise the commission, you set a timetable including opportunities for clarification, you make the award according to the criteria. One of the criteria will be the quality and experience of the team. You must be aware of the possibility of appeals by the losing bidders so your process must be legally bomb proof.

What exactly happened here? Commercial in confidence until it isn't.

 

Not to mention that your own auditors (or worse) will descend on you if you break the procurement law. You absolutely cannot just award it to who you like. And because the damned tendering process is so long winded and so expensive for everyone (even the unsuccessful bidders) its really important to try and get it right first time. If its somehow gone pear shaped both parties will be keen to make things work if they can, but all along the way there are complicated legal hurdles that need to be negotiated. In my time in the public sector we used to joke that a moderate amount of fraud would be far cheaper than the processes intended to prevent it, but of course the problem is fraud tends not to stay moderate.

 

Being a public sector contract I suspect they went for the cheapest

 

Not necessarily - there is a lot of flexibility to set the criteria. Ones I have worked on have sometimes been 70% quality - 30% price.

The difficulty - especially for services contracts, which in a way this is - is how you write the quality criteria, i.e. the deliverables. That's not trivial. Many a happy afternoon can be spent (*) discussing the criteria, which are mandatory and which desirable, and the relative weightings.

(*) No, not really ...

Tom

 

We recently tendered for some work for a government organisation and didn't get the work this was the feedback in the email;

"Your proposal was the only one we received which fulfilled all of the criteria, however your price was one of the more expensive, so on this occasion you have not been successful".

 

IME its not unusual for *no* tender to fulfil all the criteria, so there has to be some flexibility. Its all part of the scoring and weighting Tom alludes to. The whole process is a bloody nightmare for both sides IME, but the rules are there.

 

Which does not mean that they were wrong in choosing someone else. Depends if those criteria others missed were just "nice to have's"
However would have expected during the post tender negotiation phase you being given a chance to reprice without those nice to have's. At least that is what I would have done, maybe the constraints on public process prohibits logic.

 

Please no... The bloody process drags on long enough already. If you allow for endless reworking of tenders nothing would ever get past the tender process.

 

If the tenderer thinks it can be done cheaper, then if they are so clever, let them have a go at doing the job.

 

Depends how critical the project is. If the end result of that decision (in this case driven by engineering going with an easy installation solution) is you have to send someone out the the Los Angeles for 3 months to manage the finances of the company & hence stop them folding due to it being a safety mod with an end date, not a great idea.
Other non critical projects that may work fine.
Having said that in no way could FS be described as "critical", although I expect it rates as very important to the NRM.

 

Are we any closer to knowing which TOC will operate 60103 on the mainline when it eventually does return?

 

If they've got 1 pacific (34067) out of traffic and a potential 2nd (35018) being withdrawn soon, I would have thought that would mean getting access to Scotsman again would be more attractive as it would give them a loco to fill that 75mph Class 7/8 role which, to my knowledge, they would be lacking if 35018 came out of traffic

 

That assumes that they'd have carte blanche to use Scotsman. The previous experience suggests that the NRM would be rather more restrictive.

 

Yes I thought this time around the NRM had said the focus was more on it being shown on HR lines around the country than mainline.
Even the same rules as last time would I suspect give little room for WCRC or its customers to run more than they have in the past.

 

Which is why they are in the predicament they have now.
A depreciating asset, not being used to its potential, and building up funds for its next overhaul.
Or maybe that is the end game, no overhaul????

 

Stuffing and mounting "Scotsman" would solve the trespass issues... and I thought the RM had said publicly that they were not in the business of running trains any more?

 

Its well documented that the team behind the revival of No 2, moved onto Barrow Hill en masse, after the NRM called into question the H&S, risk assessment validity of the group. The only issue was the group leader was more qualified than the NRM in the field, and when efforts were made to get a meeting to support the loco, they were turned away. No 2 now has a set of leaking liners, probably causing untold internal damage, no custodian, no preventative maintenance, a disgrace really. However the revival of No 15, is down to the same dedicated group.