Changing the face of procurement in Iceland

Major infrastructure projects make a profound difference to peoples’ lives, but they’re never easy to set up, and working in Iceland is no different. Our lawyers, led by partner Stuart Cairns, worked tirelessly to lead a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder team to ensure that this flagship project will deliver the social, economic and environmental benefits that would be expected of something of this size, solving the complex challenges presented by the island’s unique context. Plus, the team was working in a jurisdiction that had only relatively recently implemented European procurement law around utilities. Indeed, one could argue that our lawyers have changed the face of procurement in Iceland – taking it from largely cost only tendering to collaborative, qualitative tendering and in turn, delivering better value for the island.

This project has laid the foundations needed to successfully implement a world-leading transformational infrastructure project in Iceland, securing internationally renowned expertise to provide design advice and ultimately deliver the “greenest” transport project on the planet. Having started the procurement so successfully, and secured interest from some of the finest advisors in the global transport sector, the second procurement for a design team was brought forward so that the two procurements ended up being run largely in parallel. This not only added a level of additional complexity but ensured that our client benefitted ever-more from our skills as legal project managers, as we ensured that two intensive projects could run largely at the same time with largely the same team. The planning and co-ordination needed to make this possible was significant.

It has helped to truly establish our firm’s International Projects & Procurement Group as a go-to partner for our clients’ major projects, in markets across Europe and beyond. In fact, we are now advising on the four largest procurement projects in Iceland.

"Stuart Cairns and the Bird & Bird team have been working collaboratively with our wider team from the very outset of the Borgalina Project. They are pragmatic, solutions focused advisors that seek to anticipate problems, provide solutions and simplify the complex. Their support on this important project has been invaluable.” - Hrafnkell Ásólfur Proppé, Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration