North East Batch Schools

Portland advised UK construction company Galliford Try on their successful competitive bid for the first scheme under the UK Government’s Priority School Building Programme to achieve financial close, structuring the project to ensure it would achieve investment grade rating for the public sector’s “aggregator” funding solution. Since then, we have worked on several variations with the client.

Portland supported Galliford Try from the initial pre-qualification stage through to financial close and beyond, covering the following aspects:

• Support and provision of financial information for the pre-qualification questionnaire
• Assistance on all financial matters during the subsequent bidding phases, leading to a best and final offer (“BAFO”) submission
• Support on financial and commercial matters in the negotiations with the public sector during the BAFO negotiated procedure process, and then during the remaining clarifications once Galliford Try was appointed as preferred bidder
• Development of a full financial model, a key component of each submission, aimed at (i) optimising the model efficiency to ensure the most cost-efficient unitary charge would be submitted as part of the proposal, (ii) running equity sensitivities, (iii) running public sector required sensitivities and (iv) running a significant range of sensitivities required by S&P rating agency and the EIB.
• Interaction with lenders’ advisors, as required, and leading on model audit process
• Assistance with S&P to ensure the required rating would be obtained to enable the government’s selected aggregator funding route to be applied, which included less than 50% of EIB senior debt
• Assistance with negotiation of documentation & conditions precedent to financial close
• The project was competitively structured with ca 90% debt and 10% shareholders funds.
• Since the initial financial close, we have supported the project company with modelling and financial advice during major project variations requested by the public sector (2017 and 2024).

The project won ‘Best Education Project’ at the Partnership Awards which recognise the best in Public Private Partnerships (PPP) internationally.