Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2016-05-06
Buyer: Flintshire County Council
Country: UK
Region: Flintshire and Wrexham
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 09310000 | 09320000 | 31682000 | 42914000 | 45111000
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Flintshire County Council (for and on behalf of those authorities listed above) (the ‘Partnership’), sought a contractor (or consortium) to enter into a long-term PPP contract for the provision of a solution for the treatment and disposal of the Partnership's residual waste (the ‘Project’). The Project is being supported by the Welsh Government (‘WG’). The Project includes the design, build, finance and/or operation of a waste treatment facility on a site provided by Flintshire County Council. The Project includes the handling of all treatment outputs, rejects and residues from the solution. The Project will also include the marketing of any electricity produced by the facility. The Partnership will follow a lead authority model and Flintshire County Council will enter into the contract for and on behalf of itself and the other local authorities in the Partnership.
The Partnership utilised the competitive dialogue procedure in relation to this procedure, in which only one tenderer (WTI) remained at preferred bidder stage. The Partnership would like to highlight that following the competitive dialogue process, and as a result of further changes to the economic climate, it has been decided to accept WTI's final tender on that basis that i) WTI shall utilise project financing rather than corporate financing; ii) the parties have agreed to an increase in throughput at the facility from 175 000 tonnes to 200 000 tonnes; and iii) WTI's pricing assumptions in respect of guaranteed third party waste and electricity income within the financial model have been revised as a result of deteriorating forecasts for electricity and third party waste pricing (which would have occurred irrespective of the identity of the tenderer).
Initial contract term of 25 years (to include a 3 year construction period) with an option to extend for 5 years.
In addition to the changes described in Section II.2.4), on 30.11.2013, the Partnership publicised its intention in the OJEU to permit WTI to bid on the basis that transfer station management and operation was to be excluded from the scope of the project (ref: 2013/S 233-405038). WTI therefore will manage a transport solution only.
Having taken legal advice, the Partnership considers that the above changes do not amount to a substantial variation of the original contract as advertised pursuant to Regulation 72(8) and so does not require a new OJEU competitive tender process. The above changes do not i) render the contract materially different in character; ii) introduce conditions which would have allowed for the admission of other candidates than those initially selected, the acceptance of a tender other than WTI's submission or would have attracted additional participants to the procurement procedure; iii) change the economic balance in favour of WTI (in fact, WTI has accepted increased financial risk from that previously envisaged at the final tender stage in respect of a) the point at which WTI is required to share TPI with the Partnership and b) the level of TPI which WTI is required to guarantee in its base case financial model, despite the revised pricing assumptions mentioned above); iv) extend the scope of the contract considerably; and v) involve the replacement of WTI with an alternative contractor. The changes stated meet the Authorities' original project aims and objectives and affordability target. The amendment is part of identifying the solution that best meets its needs and is considered to be fully compliant with the competitive dialogue procedure. However, the Partnership has taken the step of publishing this notice to alert the market to the fact that such amendments will be incorporated into the project in the interests of transparency.
Any proceedings should be promptly brought to the attention of the Council via the above contact details, and will be dealt with in accordance with the requirements of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006 (as amended) (‘PCR 2006’). Any review proceedings must be brought within the time-scales specified by the applicable law, including, without limitation, PCR 2006. In accordance with PCR 2006, the Council will incorporate a minimum 10 calendar day standstill period from the date information on the award of the contract is communicated to tenderers.


Number of bids: 1