POL00028693
POL00028693
Post Office Counters Ltd
Horizon Progromme Director
SUBJECT TO CONTRACT - WITHOUT PREJUDICE
Mike Coombs
Director Programmes
ICL Pathway
Forest Road 10 December 1998
Feltham
MIDDLESEX
TW13 7EG
No he
ACCEPTANCE
Can you please clarify some points arising from this morning’s conversation about the
Acceptance document dated 9 December . I must stress that these enquiries are solely froma
POCL point of view. .
1. Are ICL giving unequivocal confirmation that the rights of the Authorities to raise
substantive faults beyond those defined in acceptance specifications remains and is
as described in Schedule A07 para 2.9 and the related 6.1(d) of the Related
Agreements?
2. POCL's view is that Acceptance should only occur after the completion of Live Trial
so that point 1 above can be properly exercised. Do you in consequence have any
requirements about the length of Live Trial for Acceptance purposes?
3. Please confirm that, reflecting Richard Christou’s remarks last week , you agree that
in re-testing corrected acceptance incidents POCL must reserve the right to raise new
incidents which are apparently caused by the corrections?
4, Am [right in concluding that you now agree that the Expert should play no partin
Release Authorisation process? POCL still feels very strongly that it must have the
final say in what is released into any POCL live environment.
Post Office Counters Led
King Edward Building
King Edward Street
London
ECL IAA
Telephone 0171 776 3561
Focsime 0171 776 3955,
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POL00028693
POL00028693
5
Mike Coombs
10 December 1998
5. POCL and its advisors feel that your proposals regarding the Experts role in
Acceptance, means in effect, that the Expert will have the final decision on all
disputes. In practice the ability to litigate or arbitrate later is of no value if an overall
Acceptance decision has been taken by default based on the Expert decisions. In
these circumstances POCL would like ICL to consider whether certain specific
grounds for veto of the Expert decision could be retained by the Contracting
Authorities. For example an Expert decision which seriously impacted POCL’s
accounting integrity or seriously dis-advantaged significant number of its customers
would be grounds for POCL veto.
6. Finally I am concerned that you still seem to be requiring 100 “b” acceptance
incidents to be allowed before Acceptance failure. Our view remains at 20 and
technical discussions between us are unlikely to raise this significantly.
_GRO-
DAVE MILLER
Jett Trisgs
Got Bide
Sadaies -