Highlands and Islands Airports officially launched the call for tenders for the remote towers at Dundee, Inverness, Kirkwall, Stornoway and Sumburgh airports. The central location from which operations will be conducted is Inverness. According to the official notice, the expected value of the contract is 8.5 millions pounds - 9.7m€ as of today's exchange rate but who know what Brexit will bring...
This is a highly political tender and discussions about this project went up to the Scottish Parliament, as we reported in our weekly review #32. Centralising such services and moving high-value jobs away from the islands to a central location is a very sensitive topic. Besides the 17 evaluation criteria, the notice also explicitly mentions community benefits: "
Tenderers are required to propose community benefits for inclusion in the contracts, which may include: apprenticeships, training and education events and local supply chains initiatives".
The first video conference for potential tenderers will take place on the 7th of May, which is three days after the notice publication. The tender process will then run in steps and requests to participate must be submitted until the 4th of June. Invitations to tender are expected to be sent by the 25th of June. This shows HIAL's intention to progress rapidly, despite the COVID-19 situation.
This combination of project's size, political element and timing will certainly make it an interesting tendering process and you can count on us to keep an eye on it. Subscribe to our newsletter to not miss an update.
Best of luck to all participants!
