Restarting a stalled project: check before you remobilise
By SubTrada ·
Stalled schemes come back. When they do, the commercial team inherits a supply chain, a drawing set and a tender history that have all aged quietly, and none of it can be trusted as it stands. Before anything is reissued, re-check who you are buying from, which drawings are current, and what each package was actually priced against.
What happened at Harlow
Construction Enquirer reports that Kier is lined up to return to the high-containment laboratory at the £3bn UK Health Security Campus in Harlow. A new government business case reinstates Kier's pre-construction services agreement for the H50 building. A fresh two-stage tender for the wider main campus is expected in November.
The background is a long freeze. UKHSA suspended its main construction supply chain from 2022 while the Treasury and DHSC reassessed the scheme as costs climbed well beyond the original £2bn estimate. The business case says previous contracts were terminated, expired or placed into suspension. Officials warned that replacing Kier would have meant a 12 to 18-month procurement exercise and risked losing the programme's place in a tight specialist supply chain.
That last point is the lesson. Continuity has value, but only when you can prove what you're continuing.
Why a restart is harder than a fresh start
On a new job, everyone knows nothing is approved yet. On a restart, people assume that whatever was approved before still stands, and that's where the money goes.
Specialists who were prequalified three or four years ago may have changed ownership, lost key staff or let their insurance lapse. Design has usually moved on as well. Revisions pile up, standards change and the client's brief drifts. Old tender returns sit in inboxes priced against drawings nobody can line up with the current set. Put that in front of a client asking why the restart costs more than the paused budget and you have a difficult meeting.
Re-check the supply chain from scratch
Don't carry old approvals forward. Treat every specialist on the previous list as a returning applicant.
Re-run the PQQ at the right tier for the package value and risk, not the tier they cleared last time.
Check that insurances are current and track their expiry dates live, not as a PDF filed in 2022.
Confirm the company is the same company: ownership, directors and any insolvency history in the gap.
Ask for recent references on comparable work, not the references they gave before the pause.
Record which specialists you are deliberately keeping for continuity, and why.
On high-spec packages such as containment, MEP and specialist glazing, the pool is shallow, so the temptation to wave a known name through is strong. Keep them by all means, but put them through the same checks as everyone else. If something goes wrong later, "we used them before" is a poor defence to a client or an auditor.
Establish one current drawing set
Before any package goes back out, the design team and the commercial team need to agree which drawings are current. On a restart, that's rarely obvious.
Bulk-load the latest set and file it by package. Then compare the information required schedule (IRS) against what has actually been issued, so missing or late information is visible on day one rather than discovered through RFIs in month three. Anything superseded during the pause should be clearly withdrawn so it doesn't turn up in a tender pack.
This is where SubTrada's drawing upload, auto-filing and IRS tracker earn their place. A restart is basically a document control problem dressed up as a procurement problem.
Reissue tenders from controlled information
A two-stage route like the one planned at Harlow helps, because it lets you bring specialists in early on the risky elements. But second-stage pricing is only as good as the information it's built on.
Issue each package with drawings pulled from the controlled set, not attached by hand from a shared drive. Keep tender queries and clarifications in one place, so the clarification log is part of the award file. Track each package's status on a procurement tracker the client can see. After a long pause, the client will want to see progress, and showing it beats a weekly spreadsheet that's already out of date.
Worked example: a restart readiness check
Take a hypothetical paused scheme coming back with eight trade packages, three of them previously let and five never tendered.
List all eight packages. Mark the three let ones "status unknown" until the contract position is confirmed as live, suspended, terminated or expired.
For the three let packages, confirm the contractual position with the client's advisers before you talk to the specialist about rates.
Re-run the PQQ and insurance checks for every proposed specialist, including the incumbents.
Agree the current drawing set by package and log IRS gaps against each one.
Only then issue or reissue tenders, with a clear basis-of-pricing statement naming the drawing revisions.
Report readiness to the client package by package, flagging where continuity is a deliberate choice.
None of this is clever. It's the work that gets skipped when a programme restarts in a hurry because a funding window has opened.
Common mistakes on remobilisation
The most expensive one is letting a returning specialist price new work off old drawings because "nothing much has changed". The second is pricing variations against a superseded base, which turns every later instruction into an argument. Number every change from the restart date and tie each one to an issued instruction, so the valuation trail starts clean.
FAQ
Can we keep the original supply chain on a restarted project?
Often, yes, and there can be good programme reasons to. But re-qualify them first and record why continuity was chosen.
Do old tender returns still count?
Treat them as market intelligence, not prices. Any return made against superseded drawings needs to be re-priced against the current set.
What should the client see during a restart?
Package-by-package status covering design readiness, prequalification, tender issue and award, so they can see progress rather than being asked to trust it.
When should the IRS be rebuilt?
Before the first tender goes out. Gaps found after award turn into RFIs, delay and cost.
My view: if a scheme in your pipeline is paused, start the readiness check now while there's no deadline. When the restart comes, it usually comes fast, and a team with a clean supply chain and drawing position wins the argument over who carries the cost of the gap.