Capital works scheme for Hammersmith & Fulham was due to have lasted seven years

A west London council has pulled the plug on a seven year deal to carry out remedial and general construction work across the borough because the job’s numbers didn’t add up.

Hammersmith and Fulham council had asked firms to price up bids for the £75m responsive capital works deal but in an update posted on the Official Journal, the authority said it was now cancelling the procurement process.

general building

Source: Shutterstock

Work planned included remedial building jobs

It said an internal review had “identified a number of structural flaws in the pricing tables and evaluation methodology that cannot be addressed in the current procurement and in consequence the most economically advantageous tender for the Council cannot be identified”.

It said the problems centred on the pricing tables and evaluation methodology it was using to assess bids.

The council added: "It has become apparent that the pricing tables included for the tender stage were not sufficiently clear or structured so as to enable bidders to understand the pricing submissions required and price accordingly, inform bidders how to formulate and compile their prices in order to enable orders to be priced under the contract, and correspond to the solution sought by the council."

In the update, it said the pricing methodology for orders under the project was not sufficiently clear despite further clarification and, as a result, bidders were interpreting the methodology differently meaning bids could not fairly be evaluated.

It added: "The evaluation methodology was not sufficiently structured to ensure that the quality aspects of tenders met the Council’s high quality standards."

As a result, the council said it made a decision “to exercise their discretion to not award the contract and to abandon the tender process”.

No detail was given on when the job might be retendered.