(3)
conflicting pressures of giving you meaningful and possibly
binding figures before the information is available which
would enable their reasonable determination, and the
protection of our interests both in the sense of not subjecting
our Companies to unreasonable risks .and in that of avoiding
the presentation of proposals not as attractive as they might
be when a sounder evaluation of Project features and costs
becomes possible. We have now accepted that some kind of
Project price bid must be submitted at this time, and we have
determined that the best compromise we can see to reconcile
the conflicting pressure is to quote the ceiling price you
require calculated with sufficient amplitude to protect us
against the many remaining uncertainties
As the nature of
these circumstances dictates that such a price understates the
eventual attractiveness of our final proposals, we intend that,
while such a ceiling price should enable you to determine the
acceptability of our counter-bid, our proposals should not be
judged solely on that figure. To this end we propose that,
in the event of a negotiation following the selection of our
Group as the Contractor, the actual contract price be that which
can be more reliably calculated in a few months' time, and
which we feel certain would be considerably more favourable to
the Government than any ceiling price (or prices). In so doing
we have felt that the diverse and in some respects conflicting
purposes of the Steering Group (economy of project realisation
and assurance of ultimate price liability) may be best catered
for by giving it a choice among several contractual options,
any of which would be acceptable to our Group. These
alternatives are accordingly set out below:-