The established practice in recent years to build highways at lower prices than previously planned went down in history. At the opening of the price bids for the construction of 37-kilometre-long stretch of Struma highway (Lot 2) it became clear that a mile would cost about 4 million or twice as high as the Trakia and Maritza highways.
Section of Blagoevgrad Dupnitsa is to be made by Bulgarian-Italian consortium, which includes the Italian company Impreza and the Bulgarian GBS-Infrastructure Construction and Patstroy 92. If the procedure is not appealed, the construction could begin later in April and be completed by 2015.
The surprising appreciation for the second lot of Struma highway is due to the new approach for selecting a contractor that is used for the first time in the country. The rather low prices in the tenders for Trakia and Maritza raised doubts in the European Commission about the quality of the new roads and evidence seemed to have been found in the re-asphalting of 18 km of the last two lots at the highway to Bourgas last summer.
This time of the Road Infrastructure Agency decided to hold the tender in two phases. The first was a screening of contenders based on their turnover and completed projects. Offers were submitted by 15 candidates, but only eight met the criteria. First in the ranking was the Greek Actor for serious turnover for the last three years – 8.78 billion levs, and the last was the consortium Struma – Lot 2 (1.146 billion levs).
In the second stage of the competition approved companies had to submit their technical and price bids. Only Austrian Strabag decided not to participate, while the Greek Jamp;P Avax dropped out after it papers were placed in a transparent envelope and therefore were declared void. The second phase thus sifted only six candidates. But three of them – the Greek Actor, the Italian consortium Todini – Salini and the consortium Struma 2012, which includes PCT Holding, Spanish Acciona and German Hochtief were not allowed to open the price bids as their technical proposals did not meet the requirements.
Ultimately, the union DMH which includes Turkish company Dous, Russian Mostovik and Varna Hydrostroy received the lowest technical score of 5 points. Above it, with 26 points ranked OHL-Trace-Struma II – union of Trace Group Hold and Spanish Obrascon Huarte. A favorite in the list with a maximum of 35 points was the consortium Struma-Lot 2 (Impreza GBS-Infrastructure Construction and Patstroy 92). All three participants gave the same construction period of 22 months for which they were awarded 15 points.
Consortium Struma – Lot 2 gave the lowest execution cost of nearly 299 million lev without VAT. DMH asked about 305 million levs, and Trace-OHL-Struma II – 354.6 million levs. In this situation, even the cheapest offer exceeds by nearly 100 million lev the price set as indicative one of 200 million levs without VAT.
I do not worry about the price, but – I hope that we are putting an end to dumping prices and most importantly – the highway will be built well and on schedule, said Regional Development Minister Lilyana Pavlova.
The BANKER
