PFI dispute concerning management services concession contract

Facts

Client: SPV

Region: UK

Industry: Healthcare sector

Issues

Fenwick Elliott provided advice to a client following the termination of a SPV management services concession contract concerning the SPV management of 11 hospitals.

The case involved hundreds of thousands of electronic documents and complex issues of management of professional services and hard FM services in NHS healthcare. It was therefore necessary to screen a vast quantity of data over a number of years on 11 sites, in order to obtain a detailed understanding of what had happened in relation to the underlying project agreements and interface contracts.

Following the exchange of pre-action protocol exchanges, it was necessary to prepare full proceedings for issue at the TCC. There then followed a number of contentious interlocutory hearings before the client was able to achieve a full and final compromise without the need for a full hearing.

Solutions

In a short space of time Fenwick Elliott had to assimilate the detail of a large and factually complex matrix of obligations/duties within the primary and tertiary agreements. This involved considering issues relating to building maintenance, new build projects, soft FM and management services generally.

We set up document management systems to interrogate the data and set it in dataset fields to aid inquiry. We were then able to ascertain and assess the weight of the client's obligations, defaults, rights and remedies.

We also prosecuted the claim through a number of interlocutory stages including e-disclosure and witness statements.

This enabled us and the client to prepare well-marshalled and developed arguments which could be deployed to assist the negotiation of a full and final settlement.

Benefits 

The ultimate benefit for our client was the negotiation of a full and final settlement to a contentious dispute, bringing certainty and avoiding the costs of a full trial.