An online conference “Public Procurement in the Road Industry. What has been achieved, what are we striving for?” was held, organized by our partners – the National Association of Road Workers of Ukraine.
Representatives of the National Expert Construction Alliance of Ukraine took part in the discussions. The President of the Alliance, Viktor Leshchynsky, spoke about the expertise of projects in road construction and public procurement.
The stages of design and expertise are key stages of the construction process. And recently, there has been a trend of decreasing the quality of both design and expertise, which in turn entails the appearance of poor-quality roads.
When participating in tenders, some expert organizations reduce the price of their own services to an amount that is sometimes 4-5 times lower than the cost of such a service according to DSTU. A critical reduction in the cost of a service means the inadequate quality of such expertise.
The National Expert Construction Alliance of Ukraine has prepared several recommendations on preventing dumping in the construction expertise market and sent these recommendations to Ukravtodor, the Ministry of Regional Development and the Ministry of Economy.
The first recommendation is to have at least two specialized experts on staff, one of whom must be registered with the organization at the main place of work. The second recommendation is that the cost of the service, which is lower than the market value, should entail a detailed check of the organization on its ability to provide a quality service in compliance with all standards. The organization should have similar executed contracts and assets that will allow it to bear the risks in the event of poor-quality service performance.
Implementation of these recommendations will avoid dumping on the market and prevent a further decrease in the quality of expertise services.
Michel Demarre, representative of the World Road Association PIARC, shared the world experience of conducting tender procurement in the road industry, because in the EU, the procedures for transforming the public procurement system have come a long way over the past 20 years.
Artem Bezugliy, Director of the State Enterprise “DerzhdorNDI”, spoke about the qualification criteria in the new methodology for road works procurement.
Stanislav Gvozdikov, Head of the NGO “Infrastructure Development”, spoke about how tender documentation affects the road procurement market.
Valeriy Grusha, Chief Engineer of the NGO “Transengineering”, summing up the event, emphasized that the criteria for high-quality performance of road construction works should put an end to the dictatorship of the lowest price during bidding.
