BT is currently in negotiations with the firms after ruling out all other bids. Although both are keen to win the contract outright, it is understood that the package to manage the facilities and carry out maintenance on all BT properties could be split between them.
Originally, Project Jaguar was understood to include £200m of capital projects, but BT has scaled down the scope of the work.
A BT spokesperson said: “All our negotiations are confidential and we do not intend to make a decision on Project Jaguar for several weeks. It’s a major project and we are still in the process of pulling it together.”
However, a BT insider said: “The bottom line is, it’s now down to those two. There’s no one else in the picture. The work will be split between them as BT wants to keep them on their toes.”
BT had indicated that Project Jaguar could be split between as many as four bidders. Amec and Carillion declined to comment.
The news will be a blow to construction manager Mace, which had teamed up with Citex to bid for the work. The other consortium on the shortlist of four was Bovis Lend Lease, which had joined forces with facilities management specialist Dalkia. One of the bidders expressed disappointment at not winning the contract, but stressed that the process had been worthwhile.
“The Jaguar concept has made companies work together and I think that will lead to greater co-operation and the establishment of more one-stop companies in the future,” he said.
The initiative is called Project Jaguar because BT is keen to introduce cost savings through methods recommended by former Jaguar chief executive Sir John Egan in his Rethinking Construction report.
The package of FM work and maintenance embraces a number of key tenets of Egan thinking.
These include:
- Commitment from both the client and contractors to use simplified performance measurement criteria and contracts
- Benchmarked prices that fall every year
- Clearly defined output levels that improve every year.
