Tomorrow MPs from the parliamentary infrastructure commission will be examining the tender to complete the second terminal at Warsaw’s Okecie airport. The losers, Strabag and Hochtief are crying foul play, whilst the winners, a consortium of Ferrovial, Budimex and Estudio Lamela claim that they can defend their proposals.
Marek Michałowski, MD of Budimex, claims that the accusations of his competitors have no basis. He claims that his company proposed bang up to date technical solutions and major cost reductions hence success. He also pointed out that no-one on the tender commission had any doubts. The consortium proposed to complete the work for USD206m. Considerably more costly were Strabag’s proposals at USD274m and Hochtief’s at USD279m. Strabag claims that Budimex’s offer is around USD60m too little. It would seem however that questions were being asked about the valuation of the parking and runway coverings were being asked last month.
The airport’s authority (PPL) boss, Zbigniew Lesiecki, will have to explain the reasons for his choice of winner tomorrow. The infrastructure ministry seems to be a little worried about certain signs of murky procedures used in the tender process.
Infrastructure minister Marek Pol has shown a lot of concern about the interest shown by some MPs in this affair. If however everything appears in order then a tender contract will be signed in September. That will leave Strabag and Hochtief with the one choice of resorting to legal procedures which may take much longer that the entire construction programme.