Incumbent contractor EnergySolutions yesterday filed a claim for damages against the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in a challenge to the recent award of the Magnox/RSRL contract to the Cavendish Fluor Partnership. Bechtel, EnergySolutions’ teaming partner in the Reactor Site Solutions bid, did not join in the legal challenge. EnergySolutions contends that the NDA “has inconsistently and in breach of equal treatment applied the evaluation criteria (including the scoring criteria),” and “committed manifest errors of assessment in scorings of both” the Reactor Site Solutions and Cavendish Fluor bids, according to a filing by the company in the High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division Technology and Construction Court.
The claim states that the NDA did not evaluate some material in the Reactor Site Solutions bid, and evaluated it against requirements that weren’t specified beforehand, and did not fully apply scoring criteria to Cavendish Fluor. Bechtel spokesman Fred Desousa said in a written response: “As we are in different commercial circumstances, Bechtel has not joined EnergySolutions in its legal challenge. Bechtel stands fully behind the thorough and realistic tender from Reactor Site Solutions for Magnox/RSRL, and we respect EnergySolutions’ right to independently seek legal redress.”
The challenge comes after earlier this month the NDA began transition to Cavendish Fluor. NDA spokesman Bill Hamilton said in a statement: “The NDA understands that legal action is being commenced by one of the unsuccessful participants in the Magnox/RSRL competition. The NDA remains confident that the competition process was carried out in a robust manner in compliance with EU guidelines. The standstill period following the announcement of the preferred bidder has closed and the transition programme leading to the preferred bidder taking over the 12 nuclear sites in September is now underway. The new contract looks set to deliver savings in excess of 1 billion pounds against previous plans.”
