Economic operator’s challenge to a services contract award

Our client, the economic operator, believed it had been excluded from a tender opportunity with a contracting authority with which it had a prior relationship.  Negotiations didn’t make progress so, given pressure of time as the clock started to run down, we had to issue a claim.  We successfully defeated the contracting authority’s application to overturn an automatic suspension after working around the clock to prepare detailed witness statements and the claim was earmarked for an expedited trial.  Having seen our case set out so comprehensively at an early stage, the contracting authority and the other parties which stood to lose out if the contract award was overturned worked together the find an outcome which would enable our client to feed services into the end service offering.  The claim was therefore resolved without the need to go to trial.