Costain consortium pulls out of £700m MoD prime contract

Defence Estates has received tender returns from three of the four bidders for its £700m-plus South West regional prime contract.

The Cirrus Prime Services consortium, consisting of Costain, Scott Wilson and Group4, did not return a tender, leaving Debut Services (Bovis Lend Lease and Babcock SGI), Prime Serve (Balfour Beatty and WS Atkins) and Interserve Defence pitching for the contract.

Asked why it did not return its tender, a Cirrus spokesman told CJ: "We took the decision that we didn't want to pursue this particular project."

Defence Estates' integrated project team based at Yeovilton will now begin to evaluate the tenders. The appointment of a preferred bidder is due in October 2003, with the award of the contract scheduled for spring 2004.