German government procures state-of-the-art fisheries research vessel WALTHER HERWIG IV - Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek designed and accompanied the award procedure

In 2027, the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) will receive one of the world's most modern and powerful ships for fisheries and marine research. The new fisheries research vessel for worldwide shipping is being built by Fr. Fassmer GmbH & Co. KG from Berne, which was awarded the contract worth almost 240 million euros in a Europe-wide tendering procedure.

The new WALTHER HERWIG IV will be the largest ship in the BLE fleet. Among other things, it offers space for 10 laboratories, several cranes and a launching system for research work in depth. The WALTHER HERWIG IV is mainly used in the North and Baltic Seas as well as in the North Atlantic.

The Thünen Institute, as the user, will use the new vessel to monitor fish stocks, carry out marine chemical and physical measurements using state-of-the-art methods and investigate the effects of fishing on the marine environment. The fisheries research vessel is thus making an important contribution to reconciling the sustainable use of living marine resources and the protection of marine ecosystems. The ship itself is also designed to be sustainable: it can be converted to use methanol fuel in the future. Until then, it will be powered by diesel-electric propulsion, which, thanks to catalytic converters and filters, will fall below the limits of the "Blue Angel" for environmentally friendly ship design, among other things.  

The technical conception and planning of the new ship was carried out by the Ship Technology Department of the Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute (BAW), supported by the BLE and the Thünen Institute. Heuking partners Dr. Ute Jasper, Kirstin van de Sande and Dr. Christopher Marx advised BAW on the complex procurement procedure and accompanied the negotiation talks.

The "Public Sector and Public Procurement" department of the law firm Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek has been one of the market leaders in public procurement law for years. The lawyers occupy the best positions in relevant German and international lawyer rankings. Since 1991, they have been advising on public sector awards, restructurings, major projects and cooperations and have accompanied several hundred major projects of the federal, state and local governments and their subsidiaries with a total volume of more than € 40 billion, without any proceedings being successfully challenged so far.

Dr. Ute Jasper is one of the best-known lawyers for public sector procurement and infrastructure projects. She advises federal and state ministries, municipalities and companies, especially on innovative and complex projects. Ute Jasper is a partner at the law firm Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, where she heads the "Public Sector and Public Procurement" department. She and her team have been ranked 1st in the public procurement law ranking of the JUVE Handbook of Commercial Law Firms for years and are the "first address on the market" for infrastructure according to "Law Firms in Germany". In October 2016, she and her team were awarded the JUVE Award for Regulated Industries.

Kirstin van de Sande, Partner, is responsible for the design and implementation of complex procurement procedures in the "Public Sector and Public Procurement" practice group.

Dr. Christopher Marx, partner and member of the "Public Sector and Public Procurement" practice group, is a specialist in civil law contract drafting in complex procurement procedures.