The Arbitration Board for the Building Industry has issued a final ruling in the Wintrack II proceedings in the first instance. In a follow-up to its interim ruling of 3 May 2021, in which the Board ruled that TenneT was lawfully entitled to dissolve the agreements with Heijmans Europoles B.V. (the Heijmans Infra B.V. and Europoles GmbH & Co KG consortium) out of court, the Board has now ruled on instalments and payments to be (re)paid and advance compensation as claimed by TenneT.
The Board has ruled that Heijmans Europoles B.V. does not have to repay any instalments to TenneT and that TenneT must still pay a number of outstanding instalments to Heijmans Europoles B.V. The Board also ruled that Heijmans Europoles B.V. does not need to pay TenneT advance compensation and that the appeal procedure should be completed before the amount of any potential compensation is determined in a so-called damages assessment procedure.
As Heijmans has previously reported, the Heijmans Europoles B.V. consortium appealed the ruling of 3 May 2021, as they believe that TenneT should not have been allowed to dissolve the agreement out of court. Consideration of the appeal was delayed pending this final ruling.
Heijmans set aside a provision of € 34 million for the Wintrack II project in 2021 as a precautionary measure. After studying the final ruling, Heijmans expects it may be able to reverse the vast majority of this provision at the presentation of the H1 2022 results. Should Heijmans lose the appeal, a significant outflow of resources cannot be ruled out as a result of the outcome of the damages assessment procedure. However, Heijmans is approaching the appeal with confidence.
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