Penri Desscan

Penri is a commercial lawyer specialising in utilities and public procurement law, projects and all aspects of general commercial law with an emphasis on long term, complex, high value services and supplies contracts.

Main areas of practice

Penri has an extensive procurement practice and has advised on numerous open, restricted, competitive dialogue and bespoke hybrid award procedures (subject to Treaty principles).

Significant experience

Social Housing

• Currently advising Pennaf Housing Group on the procurement of a 4 year multi contractor framework value up to £75m to deliver residential housing, nursing and/or residential homes, extra care homes, health/community centre projects, commercial enterprises with community groups together with associated infrastructure.
• Advising the Syniad Consortium of housing associations (Wales and West / Pennaf / Linc) on the procurement of a large scale multi supplier framework agreement for the delivery of capital projects and major refurbishment throughout Wales’s value circa £350m.
• Advising Wales and West Housing Association and the Pennaf Group on the procurement of a long term repair and maintenance agreements across a number of disciplines for planned and reactive maintenance of their housing stock across Wales – value circa £200m.

Education

• Lead procurement adviser to HPC Wales, a collaboration of 6 Welsh Universities, on its procurement, using the competitive dialogue procedure, of a £50m world-class high performance computing infrastructure to deliver research and innovation outputs that have economic impact and dealing with a threat of challenge from IBM.
• Advising Cardiff and Vale College on all aspects of its circa £40m City Centre Campus development project (new build) procured under the competitive dialogue regime.

Health & Social Care

• Advising Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board on the procurement, using Competitive Dialogue, of uniforms for all nurses, midwives and associated healthcare staff in all NHS institutions in Wales – in total covering circa thirty thousand staff x five shifts (equating to 150,000 uniforms). This politically-important project – which was promoted by the Health Minister and funded by the Welsh Government – was completed within a tight timescale (6 months from OJEU to contract award) and to budget and achieved significant cost savings to NHS Wales.

Regional and Local Government

• Currently lead adviser to the Welsh Government on its £400m Public Sector Broadband Aggregation project which aims to deliver a secure, high quality network to circa 3000 sites over 109 public sector organisations.
• Lead procurement adviser to the Welsh Government on its competitive dialogue procedure for its £500M+ Next Generation Broadband Wales, (to date) the largest broadband roll-out projects in Europe and top 5 globally.
• Lead procurement adviser to the Welsh Government on all aspects of its Welsh Public Sector Performance Management IT Solution value up to £10m.
• Six month secondment to the Economic Development Team within the Office of the Counsel General at the National Assembly (Sept 04 – March 05). Providing legal input into policy development and advising client divisions on legal issues as they arise. First point of contact with the Broadband Wales Unit, advising on vires, procurement, state aid and contract issues on a number of broadband infrastructure projects valued in excess of £100 million and in particular on all aspects of the Regional Innovative Broadband Support (RIBS) project from State Aid notification through to contract signature.

Energy

• Advising British Energy on Utilities procurement issues relating to their long term facilities management agreement valued at circa £140 million.
• Advising Welsh Power (formerly Severn Power) on the procurement aspects for the design build and operation of a circa £300 million 800 MW CUT power station including structuring of the procurement strategy from embryonic stage to contract close and drafting the entire suite of procurement/tender documentation.
• Advising Wales and West Utilities on Utilities on the procurement of a replacement commercial fleet (500+ vehicles) value circa £18m.

Expertise

• Government
• Healthcare
• Social Housing
• Commercial Contracts
• Public Procurement
• Technology

Career

Penri qualified in 2001 after completing his LPC and LL.B examinations.

Penri can also speak Welsh.