HOA3 - Harbour Operating Agreement

This notice concerns the award of a harbour operating agreement, known as HOA3, by Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) to CalMac Ferries Limited (CFL). CMAL is the statutory harbour authority at certain harbours and other marine facilities and is responsible for the operation, management, maintenance and improvement of them.

CFL is due to be appointed by Transport Scotland on behalf of Scottish Ministers as the operator of lifeline ferry services in the Clyde and Hebrides, under a ferry services contract known as CHFS3. Please refer to this notice published by Transport Scotland for further details: Notice ID: MAY529943.

The CHFS3 services will call at the CMAL harbours. CMAL is awarding the HOA3 to CFL because it is the operator of CHFS3 and because of the need to have the same operator for both the ferry services and the harbour operations as explained in this notice.

CMAL intends to award the HOA3 to CFL following the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a call for competition under regulation 48 of the Utilities Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2016. Regulation 48(1)(c)(ii) is applicable in this case due to the unique position of CFL as the lifeline ferry services operator under CHFS3, due to which competition for HOA3 is absent for technical reasons.

These duties are allocated to CFL under HOA3. The harbour based ferry operations duties include: managing ferry bookings (including sale of tickets), checking-in customers, face-to-face dealings with ferry customers, marshalling ferry traffic and pedestrians and manging ferry disruptions.

These duties are allocated to CFL under CHFS3. Currently, and historically, the harbour operating duties and the harbour based ferry operations duties have always been delivered by the same operator entity, with the same workforce deployed to perform all the duties.

Under this arrangement, individual staff members perform dual roles covering both harbour operations and ferry operations. For the reasons explained below, this is the only reasonable and viable means of delivering the services. CFL is the current incumbent operator of both the harbour operations (under a HOA2 contract awarded by CMAL on 22 August 2016) and the lifeline ferry services (under a CHFS2 contract award by The Scottish Ministers on 22 August 2016).