20 August 2004
The troubled construction and engineering company Jarvis has lost a £174m public-private partnership contract for building and maintaining new schools in Scotland.
The loss of the contract with Fife Council comes as Jarvis struggles to survive following a sharp fall in share price and the disclosure that it had sustained a £255m loss last year.
Fife's strategic manager, David Martin, said representatives of the council and Jarvis had met several times in recent weeks. 'From those discussions there is mutual agreement for the council to reopen negotiations with the two previously short-listed bidders – Canmore and Emblem – in place of Jarvis,' he said.
Canmore is a consortium headed by the Balfour Beatty construction company while Emblem is backed by the Edinburgh-based Miller Group.
A Jarvis spokeswoman said: 'The final decision is disappointing because Jarvis was competitively selected as the best bid in terms of value for money and was ready to proceed with the contract.'
She added that they 'could not finally reach agreement on remaining key issues'.
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