We have assumed that your question concerns a re-procurement exercise, where there may be transition costs for a new supplier assuming the role of the previous supplier.
In this scenario, incumbent suppliers are often already well placed to continue operating the contract in the same manner as the previous contract and to that end, there would be no significant transition/implementation exercise. In turn, this often means that the Authority is not required to fund any costs relating to transition/implementation. In our view, this would constitute a natural advantage which the incumbent enjoys, and is not unlawful per se.
If the Authority does, however, wish to ensure that other suppliers are not necessarily immediately discounted due to a potential significant disparity in costs between the incumbent and other suppliers, the Authority may wish to ensure that any weighting attributed to transition/implementation costs within its evaluation criteria is relatively low. In our view, it would be unfair (and therefore potentially unlawful) to artificially ‘inflate’ the incumbent’s price, in an attempt to ‘level the playing field’, as this would likely have the opposite effect and would result in a scenario where the incumbent may be minded to challenge the Authority on the basis of a lack of equal treatment.