Contractual fiasco sets worrying precedent for UK demolition industry.
According to my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, a contract is defined as “a written or spoken agreement between two parties, intended to be enforceable by law”.
Why am I telling you this? Well, apparently, this meaning of the word contract is either not understood in Staffordshire or Stoke City Council considers itself exempt. For having let the contract to demolish the former Westcliffe Hospital to Brown & Mason, the council then found itself the subject of a BBC investigation over alleged irregularities in the way in which contracts were being let. And so, despite the fact that there was no evidence suggesting that Brown & Mason had done anything wrong, their contract was terminated and the entire contract will be re-tendered.
Not surprisingly, Brown & Mason MD Terry Brown is far from pleased. Setting aside the work that his tender team will have put into compiling the initial bid AND the fact that preparatory works had already begun, Brown & Mason is now effectively excluded from being able to retender. Every major UK demolition contractor worth their salt now know the bid price submitted by Brown & Mason so they’re there to be undercut. And if Brown & Mason were to re-tender at a lower price than previously agreed, they would be perceived as having been dishonest in the first place.
No-one, least of all Brown & Mason, disputes the fact that the company’s bid price was not the lowest; but that’s largely irrelevant.
For one thing, it is always possible to buy cheaper as there is always Fred and Bill down the road who share a sledge hammer and a brain cell, who once saw a demolition documentary on the Discovery Channel, and who will carry out any contract for the price of a full English breakfast and a tank of diesel per day.
In addition, Brown & Mason is a premier league contractor; just ask anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the UK demolition sector. You don’t get to demolish power stations unless you know what you’re doing.
What is important here is the precedent set by Stoke City Council’s very public reneging on a contract.
Where will this end? If you sign an agreement to buy a new Caterpillar excavator for £250,000 and you use it for a few weeks only to discover that Volvo could supply a similar machine for £240,000, could you just park up the Cat outside your local dealer and make a phone call to Sweden to arrange delivery of a cheaper replacement?
And, given that we’re now in the run-up to the festive season, can we all flock to the January sales, hand back the slightly used gifts for which we paid top-dollar pre-Christmas and then buy them back at knock-down prices in the New Year?
I for one sincerely hope that Brown & Mason’s legal team play merry hell with this case: not just for themselves; but for the UK demolition industry as a whole.
