De La Rue announced yesterday that they will not after all challenge the decision to award the new passport production contract to Gemalto. TheBBC报道that a De La Rue spokesman said:
“正如我们最初宣布的那样，我们看过对我们开放的所有可能的途径，并彻底评估了我们所有的选择。在激烈的四周内进行了四周，我们采取了不挑战英国护照合同奖励的决定“。
De La Rue no doubt got some top lawyers to look at the whole process, but now they say this:
“我们被告知，推翻决定的理由是不够强烈的，以证明继续这一行动方案。我们陛下护照办公室向竞争对手授予合同的决定仍然感到惊讶和失望。我们相信de la rue提交了最高质量和技术上最安全的出价。“
是的，但风险和质量只是供应商的三个关键方面中的两个，并这样的评估。成本是另一个，这显然是公司抵抗其竞争对手的地方。
As we said here, unless there was an obvious flaw in the procurement process, then De La Rue could only hope to argue that the competitive bid from Gemalto was unrealistically low – and that is very difficult to prove. To do so might also have involved De La Rue exposing a lot about their own cost structures, which might not have made for a comfortable experience.
We also offer congratulations to the Home Office / Passport Service procurement team involved here. The lawyers will have had a good look at the procurement process and would have seized on any weaknesses. It is not a pleasant experience to have a procurement challenged, particularly one of this sensitivity, so there will be a lot of relief amongst the buyers.
However, there is still some tension to come. Basically, Gemalto must deliver. Remember the fuss about the Met Office losing the BBC weather contract? There were some concerns about the implementation process for the new supplier there at one point, and indeed go-live was delayed, but now the hand-over seems to have gone pretty smoothly. But imagine how matters would have been reported had MeteoGroup failed. Similarly, Gemalto really must succeed, or this will all blow up again in an even more virulent way.
与此同时，毫无疑问愿意放弃德拉丽这笔交易。
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