Tender and transfer of the National Incident Desk (2010)

The National Incident Management Foundation (Stichting Incident Management Nederland, Stichting IMN) is responsible for running the National Incident Desk (Landelijk Centraal Meldpunt, LCM). The LCM, which is funded by insurers and road infrastructure operators, processes 110,000 incident reports a year. For each incident reported, the LCM calls in the appropriate recovery service. In addition the LCM handles payments for the recovery of uninsured, foreign, and abandoned vehicles. Finally, the LCM is responsible for managing the Incident Management Response Time System (Aanrijdtijdensysteem Incident Management, AIM), a system that automatically records the response times of all vehicle recovery operations on the main road network.



With the establishment in 1999 of the Stichting IMN, the LCM operations had been contracted to the VerzekeraarsHulpDienst ("VHD"). In 2007 the Association of Insurers (Verbond van Verzekeraars) decided that when the contract ran out, other breakdown services should also be given the opportunity of running the LCM. A tender procedure was to be set up, which would be open to any breakdown service that was a member of the Stichting IMN. The Stichting IMN engaged Bridgecraft to manage the preparation and implementation of the tender procedure, and if necessary, to supervise the transfer to a new operator. Legal expertise was provided by De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek.

The Stichting IMN considered the tender procedure a risky operation, given the limited knowledge it had of the way the LCM operated. Over the years, the incident centre had been gradually developed by the incumbent operator. Operating procedures were sparsely documented, and there was no previous experience regarding the transfer of activities to a different party. Consequently, the procedure involved the following:

• analysing and describing the current LCM activities
• investigating necessary changes to the current procedures and contract structure
• designing a tender procedure
• preparing the new operator contract and tender rules
• sitting on the tender board responsible for the tender procedure
• subjecting the proposed contractor to a suitability test
• supervising the transfer of VHD operations to Mondial Assistance
• helping the new operator to overcome initial problems
• assessing the performance of the new operator, and suggesting changes in the working procedures.

The tender procedure gave the Stichting IMN the opportunity to drastically revise the operator contract. Performance requirements were specified and linked to a bonus/penalty system for the contract rates. The tendering parties were asked to submit a persuasive operational plan for transferring the operations to a new party. The tender procedure also included a suitability test to determine whether a (proposed) contractor would be able to provide the service at the required level.

The tender documents were published in 2008. In March 2009 the LCM contract was awarded to Mondial Assistance, to come into effect on 1 July 2009. The transfer from VHD to Mondial caused hardly any teething troubles. By the fourth quarter of 2009 the LCM reported a performance consistently better than the figures for the previous contract period.