We successfully represented a contractor in appeal proceedings before the National Appeal Chamber and the Regional Court (public procurement court) in a rarely used single-source procurement procedure for updating the software of the SCADA and EMS subsystems of the DYSTER system.
The DYSTER system is crucial for Poland’s energy security. The National Appeal Chamber and the Regional Court agreed entirely with our arguments, finding that the subject of the contract involved an upgrade and not a purchase of a new system and that the client’s competitor’s systems were not a reasonable alternative for the employer. Therefore, the employer was fully entitled to use the single-source procurement procedure. Importantly, the case concerned a system ensuring energy security that is strategic and critical for the whole country (and even Europe, as it is interconnected and forms a whole).
The matter in question was extremely complex. Additionally, the procedure used by the employer to award the contract is uncommon and – due to the demanding requirements to be met – rarely used. Only in exceptional cases employers choose not to use a competitive procedure. The challenge of the proceedings was undoubtedly convincing the National Appeal Chamber and the Regional Court that the circumstances of the case justified the use of this exceptional procedure.
The project was supervised by Łukasz Goniak (PhD) and Wojciech Merkwa.