for tenders to run the Airport.

And he predicted the company that wins the contract will "suck the Bermuda Government dry'' for the next ten years.

Of nine companies that were invited to bid, only two submitted proposals by Friday's deadline. Government has since said that two of the companies that did not bid have joined up with one that did.

Mr. Craig Proulx, director of business development for JIL Systems Inc. near Washington, D.C., said his company and its huge United Kingdom partner BAA were invited to bid on the contract but decided it was "not worth it.'' Mr.

Proulx blamed the wording of Government's request for proposals and a "major organisational conflict of interest'' by which a company that helped to write the contract specifications was invited to bid.

But he reserved most of his criticism for experts Government hired from Airways Corporation of New Zealand Ltd.

"The bottom line is that New Zealand just did a flat-out bad job of putting out an RFP (request for proposals),'' Mr. Proulx said.

The RFP would not allow for creative approaches to make the Airport self-financing, as JIL and BAA wished, he said. Mr. Proulx felt that was also what Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan, Management and Technology Minister the Hon. Grant Gibbons, and Transport Minister the Hon. Maxwell Burgess wanted.

But those who wrote the RFP did not.

"The specs were written just to run an Airport,'' he said. "They didn't want anything in there for creative financing, or turning it into a cost recovery centre.'' Procurement expert Mr. Toby Farmer and technical expert Mr. Jack Shore were ignorant of the US-based Federal Aviation Administration which has control of Bermuda air space and were unable to answer questions the contractors asked, Mr. Proulx said.

Mr. Proulx described an August 24 bidders' conference he attended in Bermuda as "pretty bad.'' "We asked all kinds of questions there of Toby Farmer and those other people from New Zealand,'' Mr. Proulx said. But they were unable to answer and said, `We'll get back to you.' "They never did get back to us. They picked the wrong company to run the procurement,'' he said.

Dr. Gibbons, who hopes to have the successful bidder selected by the end of this month, yesterday expressed surprise at Mr. Proulx's remarks. Government made it clear that it welcomed creative ideas in the proposals, and that could have included recovery of fees, he said. The New Zealand company was chosen for its expertise and because it would no have conflicts of interest with companies bidding. And he said he would be surprised if questions at the conference went unanswered.

Because Government had not yet completed negotiations with the FAA over control of air space around Bermuda, bidders did not know whether they or the FAA would be handling Airport approach control, Mr. Proulx said. "BAA and ourselves were not prepared to bid on something that was an extremely moving target.'' The controversial inclusion in the bidding of Serco Aviation Services Inc., the Canadian subsidiary of a large UK company, was also a factor, Mr. Proulx said.

"It was a major organisational conflict of interest that Serco bought THA (Thompson Hickling Aviation) and THA wrote the specs (for the Airport contract).

"Something is very funny there.'' While Dr. Gibbons has maintained that Serco had no unfair advantage, Mr.

Proulx said the company did have an edge because "Serco had the specs longer than we had them.'' He added that the deadline companies were given to submit a proposal was "very tight.'' Govt. blasted over bidding From Page 1 BAA is an $8-billion company that owns and operates seven airports in the UK and several others around the world. It has turned many of them into money makers. "We decided to team up with them because we felt there was no better company in the whole world that runs airports than BAA,'' Mr. Proulx said.

He expected that the companies that did bid -- Serco and Allied Signal Technical Services Inc. -- would demand between $8 million and $10 million a year to operate the Airport.

"I guarantee you that over the next ten years, they will suck money out of Bermuda,'' Mr. Proulx said. "They will suck it dry. They will just keep charging and charging and charging.'' While the contract is only for five years, he said Government would not be able to take over the Airport at the end of that time.

Mr. Proulx said BAA felt the same way as he did. But Mr. Mike Bell, BAA's regional director for North America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda, distanced himself from many of the remarks.

He denied Serco's involvement was a factor in his decision not to bid and declined to comment on the performance of officials from Airways Corporation of New Zealand.

The five-year time scale of the contract was too short to recover costs, the scope was too limited because it did not go beyond air operations, and the size of the contract and Bermuda market were relatively small, Mr. Bell said.