eKapija | Patrijarha Pavla Boulevard, tender with no end in sight – Third attempt at awarding contract unsuccessful, new request for protection of rights filed

Illustration (Photo: kokixx/shutterstock.com)

It is increasingly certain that work on Patrijarha Pavla Boulevard, on the section from the Ada Bridge to Kosutnjak, will not begin this calendar summer, either, because the third attempt at awarding the contract to the selected consortium of contractors did not end well either. The reason is now already expected - a new request for protection of rights filed less than ten days after the contract was awarded for the third time to the initially selected consortium at the end of June. This is the third request for protection of rights since the Belgrade Land Development Public Agency first awarded the contract in February, and the seventh such request filed since this public procurement was announced more than a year ago (at the end of June 2024).

The decision on the now penultimate request for protection of rights indicates that it is unlikely that the selected consortium (even if it is awarded the contract for the fourth time) will be able to take possession of the site before the sixth anniversary of the start of the main works on this boulevard (which was the end of August, or the beginning of September 2019), or even by the end of the summer. Namely, that request, which preceded the awarding of the contract at the end of June, was submitted in the first decade of April this year. This means that the decision-making process on that request lasted more than two and a half months. The decision-making process on the request for protection of rights, which was submitted in mid-February, or after the first attempt to award the contract, was somewhat shorter, a month and a half, because the second attempt to award the contract was at the end of March this year.

Let us remind that the Belgrade Land Development Public Agency awarded the contract for this job to a group of bidders including Geo-projekt SM doo Sremska Mitrovica, GP Graditelj NS doo Novi Sad, Ras inzenjering niskogradnja doo Belgrade, DC Energocoop doo Belgrade, Eco construction doo Belgrade, Masinokop doo Sabac, Novkol ad Belgrade and West-gradnja doo Sabac. The estimated value of this job excluding VAT was 2.4 billion dinars, while the value of the awarded contract excluding VAT is around 2.27 billion dinars, and including tax around 2.73 billion dinars.

Bids were submitted for this tender by two other groups of bidders. One of them was not accepted because the offered value of the works was higher than the estimated one, and the second offer, which was also the most favorable in this tender, was rejected because, even after subsequent requests, as can be seen in the documentation, this group of bidders did not submit adequate evidence regarding the technical and professional capacity, more precisely, an adequate list of works performed in the previous five years, which were required by the tender documentation.

Let us also remind that the Republic Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedures recently issued a decision that partially resolves the issue of the execution of works on this road by ordering the Secretariat for Communal and Housing Affairs and the Belgrade Land Development Public Agency to reimburse the costs to the group of bidders that initiated the procedure, in the amount of almost 1.3 million dinars. The Commission previously received a request from a group of bidders consisting of the Preduzece za puteve Kragujevac, Biodekor, Hidromontaza, Hidro Tan, Procesor elektronika, Smart Foundation, Srbijaput, Stepcon and Teamenergo, which was approved, partially annulling the open public procurement procedure for the execution of works in Patrijarha Pavla Boulevard. The group of bidders led by Preduzece za puteve Kragujevac filed a request for protection of rights, which is why the tender was stopped. The request disputed the legality of the decision to award the contract, as the company Hidro Tan was considered not suitable to carry out certain works.

By the way, as we recently wrote, within the group of bidders that were awarded the contract for the execution of works within this tender three times, the largest share in the job, if they are awarded the contract for the fourth time, will be held by Ras Inzenjering (20%) and Sabac-based Masinokop (around 32%).

The planned deadline for the reconstruction of the boulevard from the Ada Bridge to Kosutnjak, from the moment the contractor takes possession of the site, is 360 days, which is the amount of time planned for this project to be completed on the ground and for Patrijarha Pavla Boulevard to get two lanes in each direction and a tram corridor in the middle on this section, as well as on the one from Kosutnjak to Pere Velimirovica Street.

The construction of the first section of this boulevard, from Kosutnjak to Pere Velimirovica Street, for whose reconstruction the consortium gathered around Energoprojekt was in charge, did not go smoothly either, but for other reasons. It was supposed to be completed in early spring 2021, but numerous deadlines were missed. Before work could begin on it, it was necessary to relocate the bed of the Topciderska River, which was completed before the reconstruction and modernization of this section of less than two kilometers began in September 2019.

As for the section on which work is now to be carried out, the first successful tender for it was announced and implemented about three years ago and was won by the consortium around Ras Engineering, but with which, as the city has emphasized on several occasions, the contract was terminated, “because the selected contractor did not want to continue the work after the prices of construction materials had drastically increased.” On the section from the Ada Bridge to Kosutnjak, one of the most important prerequisites for the start of the main works was the removal of the closed railroad tracks through Topcider, which has been done in the meantime.

After that, in December 2023, a public procurement procedure was announced for this work, but it was suspended, after which the current one was announced in the summer of 2024, with no end in sight, and at a higher price. In this latest public procurement, the price for these works was set at an amount that was about 300 million dinars (about EUR 2.5 million) higher than the price in the previous tender, when it was 2.1 billion dinars (approximately EUR 18 million). The previous tender, from December 2023, received bids whose prices exceeded the estimated amount of the public procurement.

D. Aleksic

Companies:

Geo-projekt SM d.o.o. Sremska Mitrovica