Tender

Gwynedd tenders solar generation across eleven council properties

By Staff Writer  |  22 August 2026

Cyngor Gwynedd has published a tender notice for multi-site solar photovoltaic installation work across eleven properties. The estimated value is recorded as 14,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax. The notice was published on 21 August 2026 and the tender period closes at noon on 2 October 2026.

The scope is stated in a single sentence: the design, supply, installation, commissioning and setting to work of solar photovoltaic generators connected in parallel with the distribution network operator's network at eleven properties. The procurement method is recorded as a below threshold open competition and the main category is works. The requirement is recorded as a single lot.

The notice carries two figures that do not reconcile. The estimated value excluding value added tax is recorded as 14,000,000 pounds. The gross figure recorded alongside it is 168,000,000 pounds. On every other notice read for this edition the gross figure is the net figure with value added tax added at the standard rate, which would give 16,800,000 pounds here. Both figures are reported as the notice records them. Neither is corrected and no conclusion is drawn about which is intended.

What the practitioner should take from this

The first point is the words connected in parallel with the distribution network operator's network. Parallel connection means the installation runs alongside the incoming supply and can export to it, which brings the connection process into the critical path. Connection applications are made to a third party the contractor does not control, the network operator sets its own timescales, and the answer may be an offer requiring reinforcement work at the applicant's cost. Where a contract makes the contractor responsible for connection and gives no relief for the network operator's timescales, the contractor has priced a programme risk it cannot manage. The provision to look for is the one dealing with delay caused by a statutory undertaker.

The second point is that eleven properties is eleven sites, and eleven sites is eleven of everything. Eleven access agreements, eleven surveys, eleven sets of asbestos information, eleven structural checks on whether a roof will take the array, and eleven possession windows around whatever those buildings are used for. A multi-site contract priced as though it were one job is the standard way this work goes wrong. The commercial questions are whether sectional completion applies, whether liquidated damages are apportioned by site, and what happens if one site is withdrawn.

The third point is design responsibility. The scope buys design, supply, installation, commissioning and setting to work, which is a full turnkey obligation. Where a contractor designs and installs, the standard of the design obligation matters: reasonable skill and care is a different promise from fitness for purpose, and on an energy generating asset a fitness for purpose obligation can quietly become a performance guarantee about output. Output on a photovoltaic array depends on irradiance, shading, orientation and grid availability, none of which the contractor controls. Any performance figure written into the contract needs a stated set of assumptions and a stated measurement method, or it is a guarantee about the weather.

The fourth point is setting to work. The phrase is doing more than commissioning. Setting to work generally means demonstrating the installation operates as intended under normal conditions, which implies a period of monitored operation rather than a single test. Where practical completion is tied to setting to work rather than to installation, the completion date sits later than a bidder reading the scope quickly might assume, and the retention and defects periods move with it.

The fifth point is the discrepancy in the published figures. A twelvefold gap between the net and gross values on the same notice is not a rounding difference. A bidder deciding whether to pursue this cannot tell from the notice alone whether the requirement is a fourteen million pound programme or something an order of magnitude larger, and that difference changes who should bid and what capacity they need to show. A clarification question on the estimated value should be the first one asked, and the answer should be obtained in writing before any resource is committed to the bid.

No list of the eleven properties, no capacity in kilowatts or megawatts, no contract period and no number of expected bidders is published in the release read for this item, and none is stated here.