The judges were taken aback by the scale and complexity of Field Fisher Waterhouse’s work advising on the decommissioning of Sellafield. It is a process that will take 125 years to complete and cost at least £75bn.
Field Fisher was instructed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) on the appointment of a contractor to manage the first phase of this undertaking. This 17-year project is the highest value civil public procurement in Europe, with a turnover of approximately £25bn. In all eight companies were involved in the bidding process from four different jurisdictions – the UK, France, Japan and the US.
