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Stagecoach disqualified from three franchise competitions

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LOL The Irony

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No if you read the article NR System Operator. The forensic analysis showed they didn't open the attachments.
Regardless of not opening it, confidential documents belonging to a competitor were sent to Abellio by a government employee, tainting the bidding process. In court, Abellio will probably be able to get off scot free if there weren't any shady going-on's that we don't know about.
 
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43096

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"confidential elements of Stagecoach’s bid strategy were emailed by a senior official at Network Rail, the state-owned infrastructure operator, to executives at Abellio who were involved in the development of its bid."
No if you read the article NR System Operator. The forensic analysis showed they didn't open the attachments.
How do they know Abellio didn’t open them?
 

hwl

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How do they know Abellio didn’t open them?
The article states they had some forensics experts in to check. It is perfectly feasible to check easily, especially with co-operation.
 

43096

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The article states they had some forensics experts in to check. It is perfectly feasible to check easily, especially with co-operation.
It would need Abellio’s cooperation.

Do you really believe that a Whitehall inquiry is open? Civil Service practice is not to order an inquiry unless or until you have decided what the result is going to be.
 

Peter Mugridge

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How do they know Abellio didn’t open them?

They can only know for sure that the attachments were not opened in the original mail.

What they probably can't tell is whether or not the attachments were copied into another mail ( as opposed to being forwarded ) and then opened from there. @tellytype can probably explain more about this electronic forensic analysis stuff to us.
 

387star

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"confidential elements of Stagecoach’s bid strategy were emailed by a senior official at Network Rail, the state-owned infrastructure operator, to executives at Abellio who were involved in the development of its bid."
No if you read the article NR System Operator. The forensic analysis showed they didn't open the attachments.
This is laughable
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Stagecoach seems to be protesting to DfT on the leak of their bid to Abellio, and the management of the franchising process, according to the BBC.
This is not the same thing as raising a legal challenge on the award of the EM franchise to Abellio.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business
Stagecoach has called for an inquiry into the way rail franchises are awarded, after details of a bid it submitted were sent to a rival.
The transport giant claims the Department for Transport (DfT) failed to properly investigate the matter.
The DfT said rival Abellio had not accessed information that would have affected the Stagecoach bid.
Last week, Stagecoach was stripped of the East Midlands rail contract and barred from applying for two more.

Stagecoach has also apparently involved the Commons Work and Pensions Committee about the change in DfT policy on the funding of rail pensions.
I should think they are keener to resurrect their WC and SE bids rather than overturn the EM decision.
 
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Megafuss

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How do they know Abellio didn’t open them?
The person that sent it in error may have recalled the email straight after sending it, when that occurs you get a message to say if the recipitent opened the email or not
 

RealTrains07

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"confidential elements of Stagecoach’s bid strategy were emailed by a senior official at Network Rail, the state-owned infrastructure operator, to executives at Abellio who were involved in the development of its bid."
No if you read the article NR System Operator. The forensic analysis showed they didn't open the attachments.
Still a bad thing sending it though??
 
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Stagecoach are not the good guys they have form for flawed bidding. End of the day they submitted a bid that did not meet the contract requirements therefore they do not get the contract. It is not up to them to bid on their own terms. The precedent that would send would be massive across contracting in the public sector. If they had accepted their bid then Abellio would have most likely won any legal challenge as they met the requirements. They were trying to be clever and its backfired on them. There is various big franchises coming up post the franchising review why not prepare for them instead of moping around about the ones they have lost. I would imagine that they have got a lot of stick from Beardy as they have lost his flagship West Coast franchise as well as a flawed bid on the East Coast.
 

Killingworth

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If Stagecoach and Arriva are unwilling to tender for franchises with the pension conditions as now stipulated, how many other potential participants may now take the same line? There may be difficulty in getting tenders at all, but certainly a smaller field to choose from.
 

Meerkat

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Well I liked the Virgin style. Whether or not it made any difference to the service it felt like they wanted you to enjoy the voyage, rather than just endure it.
 

whhistle

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No if you read the article NR System Operator. The forensic analysis showed they didn't open the attachments.
Forensic... this isn't CSI! I wouldn't suggest detecting whether an attachment has been opened is scientific per se. Just stick with the wording that has already been used instead of trying to introduce smart terms that don't quite fit the bill.


Not sure what the public think about this.
Stagecoach get more extensions (and thus no development) and a £40 million + bill, or just let Abellio get on with it?
I know which I'd prefer... and it isn't a large bill at the end.


I wonder if Abellio opened it after the competition?
I would like to know the outline of what Stagecoach proposed to do with the franchise. Same with Arriva.
 
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RealTrains07

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If Stagecoach and Arriva are unwilling to tender for franchises with the pension conditions as now stipulated, how many other potential participants may now take the same line? There may be difficulty in getting tenders at all, but certainly a smaller field to choose from.
DofT should have suspended the process if they only had 1 acceptable bidder
 

[.n]

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The person that sent it in error may have recalled the email straight after sending it, when that occurs you get a message to say if the recipitent opened the email or not

That's only true in certain circumstances, so can't be relied on.

I'm not sure that that its possible to prove the PDFs weren't opened even if they had for example web beacons in them, they could have been delivered to multiple email programmes each working differently (how many of us have for example on email delivered on our mobiles as well as an office computer?).
 

Roast Veg

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It is possible that they were not "attachments" and links to an online storage (such as Dropbox), which would keep such records.
 

JonathanH

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DofT should have suspended the process if they only had 1 acceptable bidder

Why? If the bid is acceptable why go to the expense of turning it down? Wouldn't there be a legal challenge if you said to a bidder that their bid was fine but not valid because there weren't any others? That's ridiculous.
 

Pete_uk

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When I use the loo I just want to concentrate, not have some unnecessary automated announcement telling me stuff I'm not interested in.

Its toilet humour. Anyway this thread is going down the pan.
 

RealTrains07

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Why? If the bid is acceptable why go to the expense of turning it down? Wouldn't there be a legal challenge if you said to a bidder that their bid was fine but not valid because there weren't any others? That's ridiculous.

1 bid for one franchise, no competition. Isnt that whats meant to happen??
 

158756

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1 bid for one franchise, no competition. Isnt that whats meant to happen??

If my understanding is correct, there were three bids. Abellio won because theirs was the best - which in this case happened to mean most compliant rather than best value or whatever else it usually comes down to.
 

Jonny

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1 bid for one franchise, no competition. Isnt that whats meant to happen??

If my understanding is correct, there were three bids. Abellio won because theirs was the best - which in this case happened to mean most compliant rather than best value or whatever else it usually comes down to.

Given the way that two bidders were declared non-compliant, they have effectively ended up with a single bid, with the subsequent lack of competition. On that form, DafT DfT are going to struggle to find future franchisees unless they change the compliance criteria.
 

Robertj21a

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Given the way that two bidders were declared non-compliant, they have effectively ended up with a single bid, with the subsequent lack of competition. On that form, DafT DfT are going to struggle to find future franchisees unless they change the compliance criteria.

I'm still puzzled why Stagecoach and Arriva continued with their lengthy and costly bids unless they had understood their approach was an acceptable alternative.
 

dgl

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I'm still puzzled why Stagecoach and Arriva continued with their lengthy and costly bids unless they had understood their approach was an acceptable alternative.
They probably thought that the franchise was basically unworkable with the new pension obligations and as such bid accordingly thinking that everyone would be in the same boat, somehow Abellio didn't bid like that and won, of course whether their bid is sustainable is another matter.
 

43096

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I'm still puzzled why Stagecoach and Arriva continued with their lengthy and costly bids unless they had understood their approach was an acceptable alternative.
Did DfT tell them they were being disqualified back then? Or did DfT string them along deliberately because they wanted three bidders in play to keep Abellio honest? Had they told Arriva and Stagecoach and they had backed out, Abellio could just name their price.
 

talltim

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Attachments don’t have to be opened if they have descriptive names. E.g ‘Stagecoach bid - non agreement of pension funding.pdf’
 
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