Originally Posted by
HEDP
Nutloose,
I don't know the commercial construct of the the new system but if it is a company set up to deliver the contract on behalf of a consortium you will likely find that there are commercial barriers to liability falling back to the parent companies. Ascent probably has insufficient funds behind it to deal with penalties incurred through failing to perform. As a result even if penalties are involved, the penalties might bankrupt the business and, with no plan B, MOD can't afford to bankrupt their only plan.
It has happened before......
Indeed. Again, I'm not entirely up-to-date, but a company cannot be awarded a contract that exceeds the value of the company at time of award. Marconi suffered from this some years ago, having been assessed as the winner of a huge contract by some margin. I've also experienced political overrules whereby a company who didn't even bid was awarded an even larger contract, only to state 6 months later that they'd make a loss. MoD staff were then instructed not to apply pressure, and ignore minor things like systems integration and whether it actually worked, regardless of the contracted requirement and regulations. And yet, someone had to make a false declaration that the work had been carried out. Which, I concede, has been ruled perfectly legal. Something to look at here?