Bid rigging builder appointed as preferred developer

You may remember from last year that the Office of Fair Trading fingered 112 construction companies due to allegations that all companies had;

…engaged in bid rigging activities, and in particular cover pricing. Cover pricing describes a situation where one or more bidders collude with a competitor during a tender process to obtain a price or prices which are intended to be too high to win the contract. The tendering authority, for example a local council or other customer, is not made aware of the contacts between bidders, leaving it with a false impression of the level of competition and this may result in it paying inflated prices.

They also alleged that;

…a minority of the construction companies have variously entered into one or more arrangements whereby it was agreed that the successful tenderer would pay an agreed sum of money to the unsuccessful tenderer (known as a ‘compensation payment’). These more serious forms of bid rigging are usually facilitated by false invoices.

Local company F Parkinson was one of the companies investigated and was found guilty of participating in an illegal cartel. It was fined £174,000.

Based on this, you’d have thought that they would be the last company on the list for any new contracts.

Not so.

Blackpool Council have been looking for preferred building companies for a 4-year contracts framework, and out of nine that submitted bids can you guess which company was first out of the hat for carrying out contracts of value £550,000 to £4million? Go on…

Actually, I don’t know which company was first out, but F Parkinson has been appointed to the panel of preferred developers for these works. Other companies appointed were Carefoot and Conlon Construction, both from Preston.

I couldn’t possibly suggest that any dodgy payments were made to or from council officials, but given that even those in the House of Lords are susceptible to a bit of palm greasing one has to keep an open mind…