Boris Watch

More trouble for Tim Parker to sort out - this does possibly illustrate why a fairly ruthless operator is needed:

EDS has filed a restraining order against Transport Trading Limited, a Transport for London subsidiary, to stop it handing the £100m-a-year Oyster contract to Cubic.

Cubic and EDS were majority partners in TranSys, which ran London’s Oyster scheme. TfL, keen to get better value for money, was renegotiating the contract with both partners, but after failing to get better terms from EDS TfL decided to hand the whole project to Cubic.

Oops.  It seems TfL’s plan was to boot out EDS (who ran the operations side), who do have a certain reputation of presiding over some spectactular IT cockups, while keeping Cubic, who run the design, installation, maintenance etc.

In fact, it was apparently intended that the contract award to Cubic from 2010 would be announced this week, which is a bit surprising given that the usual public sector rules require some sort of competition.  However, EDS have scuppered this:

The deal was meant to be signed at the same time as the termination of TfL’s contract with TranSys was announced. But EDS filed a temporary restraining order stopping TfL from signing with Cubic.

The SEC filing does reveal that TfL have been planning to deal with the Oyster PFI contract well before Boris or Parker appeared on the scene:

Negotiations with EDS and Cubic commenced under the TranSys umbrella and continued through February 2008.  At the end of February 2008 TTL notified TranSys that while satisfactory progress had been reached with Cubic, negotiations with EDS had failed.  TTL
terminated negotiations with TranSys but continued separate negotiations with EDS and Cubic outside the TranSys umbrella.  Negotiations with EDS failed again.  TTL then negotiated with Cubic to perform the entire project, both maintaining assets and providing operation services. These negotiations were successful and a new contract called the Future Ticketing Agreement (FTA) has been prepared under which Cubic would provide TTL with all services from 2010 to 2013.

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