Airfield Support Services

[Spur Lash]

Saw this on a Jane's news item today. It's slightly out of date, but is it because DART is about to close/rationalise most of our airfields? I can't find any previous reference to it, so apologies if there is.

PROCUREMENT - Abandonment of Airfield Support Services Project raises PFI doubts
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed on 23 September that it is not going to proceed with the Airfield Support Services Project (ASSP) - a US$2.5 billion Private Finance Initiative (PFI) - leaving bidding consortia and companies dismayed... and trades unions delighted.
[Jane's Defence Industry - first posted to http://jdin.janes.com - 13 October 2004]

[VP959]

I strongly suspect it's because of the strong lobby that the civvy fire service bods put up, plus tha fact that the investment appraisal only showed a very modest cost saving against conventional support.

The net result seems to have been much mucking about of a bunch of defence contractors, incurring goodness knows how much expenditure in bid preparation etc (all of which adds to their overheads, so ends up on the next defence contract) to no useful end.