Tender

Highland Deephaven seeks a lead consultant for a 2.5 million pound study

By Staff Writer  |  06-09-2026

Highland Deephaven Limited is looking for a lead consultant under the NEC4 Professional Service Contract to run a strategic feasibility study, an environmental impact assessment, masterplanning and planning permission in principle support for the Highland Deephaven project. The estimated value is 2,500,000 pounds excluding value added tax over roughly 24 months. Tenders close at 17:00 on 15 October 2026.

One appointment across four workstreams

Appointment of a Lead Consultant under NEC4 PSC to undertake and coordinate a strategic feasibility study, EIA, masterplanning and PPiP support for the Highland Deephaven project. The commission includes management of multidisciplinary technical, environmental, planning and commercial workstreams, together with coordination of future bathymetric and geotechnical survey packages.

Highland Deephaven Limited, contract notice

The commission is drawn as a single appointment rather than a set of parallel ones. The consultant undertakes the four named pieces of work and also coordinates them, and the notice separates those two duties in its own wording. Alongside them sits a third duty, the management of technical, environmental, planning and commercial workstreams that the notice describes as multidisciplinary without listing who sits within them.

The survey packages are treated differently again. Bathymetric and geotechnical surveys are described as future packages that the lead consultant coordinates, not as work the lead consultant carries out. A bathymetric survey measures the bed of a body of water, which places part of the study offshore of the site rather than on it.

The classification codes attached to the lot are architectural, construction, engineering and inspection services, environmental impact assessment other than for construction, engineering design services, engineering services for the design of civil engineering works, and geological, geophysical and other scientific prospecting services. The main category is services.

Value, duration and the dates the notice fixes

The lot record states the arithmetic and the programme in one line.

Estimated value: GBP 2.5 million (inclusive of consultancy services, specialist studies and supporting technical workstreams). Duration: Approximately 24 months from January 2027 to December 2028, including delivery of feasibility, Environmental Impact Assessment, masterplanning and Planning Permission in Principle support.

Highland Deephaven Limited, contract notice, lot description

Two points follow from that wording. The 2,500,000 pounds is inclusive of specialist studies and supporting workstreams, so it is not a fee for the lead consultant's own hours alone and cannot be read as one. The word approximately governs the duration, and the contract period recorded elsewhere on the release is 720 days, which is 24 months counted at 30 days each rather than a calendar span from a fixed start.

The tender period closes at 17:00 on 15 October 2026. That leaves the successful bidder something under three months between a normal award and the January 2027 start the lot description names, and the notice fixes no award date within that window.

The buyer, the procedure and what is missing

The buyer is Highland Deephaven Limited, registered at the Administration Building on the Highland Deephaven Industrial Estate, with a Dingwall postal address in Easter Ross. The procurement is a single lot, run under the open procedure, and variant bids are not allowed. Economic and technical selection criteria are named as documents on the release.

What the notice does not carry is as clear as what it does. No award criteria weightings are published on the release. Neither is the scale of the development the masterplan is meant to serve, in area, in built floorspace or in berth. Planning permission in principle is the object of the support workstream, so the application itself sits beyond the end of this commission rather than inside it, and the notice does not say who will carry it.

Anyone pricing this should note that the notice names the NEC4 Professional Service Contract as the form but does not name the main option under it, and publishes no pricing basis. The pricing basis governs how the estimated 2,500,000 pounds behaves once the specialist studies move, so it is the first thing to look for in the tender documents, which are not published on the register.