The late Solco Holtrop

Wednesday 8 june 2022
Jan Solco Winter Holtrop passed away on 30 May 2022 in Scheveningen, at the age of 73. Since 2006, Holtrop had been chair of the Appeals Committee that sits during the regular tender procedure for recovery agreements instigated by Stichting IMN. He was also chair of the LCM Tender Board, which is an independent organ that issues binding recommendations to the board of Stichting IMN in relation to the award of the contract to run operations at its response centre, the LCM.

Solco Holtrop

Solco Holtrop

Since the establishment of Stichting IMN, the tender procedure for recovery work on IM roads has had an in-house appeals procedure. Recovery operators who wish to contest an award decision may lodge their objections with the special independent Appeals Committee. An appeal may be lodged free of charge, hence the procedure forms an easily-accessible way of making objections known and having them assessed. Where a decision handed down by the Committee does not meet with a bidder's satisfaction, the party in question may submit grounds for appeal to the competent court.

Over the years, Holtrop dealt with 135 appeals in total. The majority of the IM recovery operators active today have had dealings with him in one or more such procedures. Some appeals were dealt with in writing, but many recovery operators said that they preferred to attend a hearing. On one occasion the chair, the sole member of the Committee, visited the site of the dispute so that he could gather further information. Holtrop wrote all his decisions himself. In over twenty cases an appeal was upheld and Stichting IMN was given a binding recommendation to adopt a fresh award decision. There were just six cases in which a losing appellant resorted to interim injunction proceedings. In each of these cases, the judge hearing the interim injunction proceedings followed the opinion reached by Holtrop.

In 2008 Stichting IMN decided that the operations of its response centre, the LCM, should be subject to a tender procedure. As the board is made up of the directors of control centres that could, potentially, be involved in a tender procedure of this kind it was decided to outsource the process to an independent organ. This was the so-called LCM Tender Board. This board for tender procedures was, at the time, and is today still made up of a representative from Rijkswaterstaat, a representative from the Dutch Association of Insurers and an independent chair. Stichting IMN entrusted this role, chair of the Tender Board, to Solco Holtrop.

The LCM Tender Board provided the board of Stichting IMN with binding recommendations in four consecutive tender procedures for the LCM on the award decision to be adopted: in 2008, this was in favour of Allianz Global Assistance; in 2015 and 2018, in favour of SOS International and, in 2022, in favour of VHD. The recommendation relating to the most recent of these decisions was signed by Holtrop on 29 April of this year.

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