Tender award for \u20ac300 million Evans Building project scrapped after review board ruling<\/p>\n
The recommendation to award the 65-year concession for the redevelopment of the Evans Building in Valletta to Valletta Luxury Projects (VLP) has been annulled by the Public Contracts Review Board.<\/p>\n
The decision follows separate appeals filed by Katari Hospitality JV and the Iconic Hotel Malta Nobu Consortium, represented by the European School of English (ESE), over the tender for the regeneration of the historic site into a luxury tourism destination. The estimated value of the concession is approximately €300 million.<\/p>\n
At the centre of the case was a major discrepancy in VLP’s financial bid. In its Financial Bid Form, VLP indicated a total offer of €78 million, equivalent to €1.2 million annually over the 65-year concession period. However, in the electronic XML submission system, the company manually entered only €1.2 million as the “Grand Total”.<\/p>\n
The board found that the evaluation committee acted unlawfully when it allowed VLP to amend the figure to €78 million after the bids had been opened. It ruled that this was not a simple arithmetical correction, but a substantial alteration to the bid, breaching the principles of equal treatment and self-limitation in public procurement.<\/p>\n
In a separate finding, the board declared ESE’s appeal formally inadmissible because it was filed without its consortium partner, Arrigo Group of Hotels, contrary to the requirement for joint representation.<\/p>\n
The board also upheld ESE’s disqualification from the tender process on financial grounds, confirming that the consortium had failed to meet the required gearing ratio threshold. It rejected ESE’s preferred method of calculation, ruling instead that the contracting authority’s approach was rational and consistent with standard industry practice in assessing financial resilience for a long-term concession.<\/p>\n
Despite this, the board ordered that ESE’s €50,000 appeal deposit be refunded in full, noting that its legal challenge had served the public interest by helping to uncover irregularities in the preferred bidder’s offer.<\/p>\n
Following the ruling, the contracting authority must now appoint a new evaluation committee to carry out a fresh financial assessment of all compliant bidders.<\/p>\n
However, the board made it clear that the Nobu Consortium is to remain excluded from the re-evaluation process because of its confirmed failure to satisfy the original selection criteria.<\/p>\n