Return to tender

Warsaw has recently seen a spate of public projects cancelled or postponed. Who is to blame for this inertia - the city authorities for not being up to the job, or the firms fighting for the contracts?

Naturally, the companies and consortiums participating in the tenders blame the local authorities for poor preparation and a lack of the political will needed to get projects underway. The city authorities, on the other hand, point the finger straight back at them for taking legal action whenever they lose a contract.
The Most Północny project is one that has been dragging on since 1999. In a capital city woefully short of bridges, this particular structure was to be part of the Trasa Mostu Północnego project - a major road linking Warsaw\\\'s 2 northern districts of Bielany and Białołęka on the opposite banks of the Vistula river. At first the project was dogged by environmental protests and legal issues. In November 2005, the project finally received official authorization.

Beauty contest blues
But this was not the end of the matter, as a competition was held last year for the design of the bridge. A shortlist was chosen of 2 designs by Transprojekt Warszawa and Transprojekt Gdański. This prompted an appeal from one of the losing companies involved in the tender, Ove Arup, on the basis that the winning designs only had 2 lanes in either direction, whereas the conditions had stipulated that there should be 3. The matter went to the Court of Appeal, which judged in favour of Arup and that the contest should be held again. There then followed a kind of groundhog day scenario: the same 2 designs were chosen, Arup appealed and won, and now there has to be yet another competition.

Palace postponed
The reconstruction of the Pałac Saski is another high-profile Warsaw project that has experienced a stuttering start - with the first tender cancelled in May last year, and the second one postponed at the end of last February. This building was located on pl. Piłsudskiego in the heart of Warsaw and was destroyed at the end of World War II.
The problems bedevilling this particular project began last year. The original plan involved selling to the winning consortium 2 neighbouring plots of land, which had also formerly been the sites of buildings destroyed in the war - the Brühl Palace and Królewska 6. The money raised from the sale of the land would have financed the Pałac Saski project. However, none of the consortiums that were originally involved in the tender - TriGránit, Buelens Real Estate and Bouygues Batiment - put in an offer. The reason for this seems to be that these consortiums were unable to raise the finance to buy the plots without the right to mortgage the 2 other plots.
Now the entire funding for Pałac Saski will come from the city\\\'s purse (app. PLN 160 mln), and in this way it has become a straight tender, under which a general contractor will eventually be chosen. The intention is still to sell the adjoining plots, but  independently of the Saski contract.
However, the second tender was to have been held at the end of February, but was again postponed, after military archives revealed that the building was longer than was thought. This has led to the conditions needing to be redrafted and a delay of more than a month for the final submission of offers. The modified plans have now been sent to the 4 firms still in the running for the contract - Warbud, Mitex, Strabag and Budimex - with the deadline for submissions set for April 10th. This in turn could be subject to another delay if the companies ask too many questions about the new conditions. Krzysztof Jankowski,  branch director of the Hochtief subsidiary Budokor believes that "the whole feasibility of the project is now in question."

Hands tied
The Łazienkowski stadium, planned for the current site of the Legia football ground, is also a project having birthing pains. This  would become the home of the Polish national football team, and would also be used as a venue for rock concerts. Last year, all the offers made by the various consortiums were judged by the tender commission to be unsuitable on formal grounds, ie. there were mistakes in each of the bids. Michał Borowski, Warsaw\\\'s chief architect and head of the tender commission, revealed that one bid had a page number missing, and in the case of Hochtief, a whole page of financial results had gone astray.
The city plans to finance the stadium as a kind of 50-50, or maybe 40-60, public-private partnership, but giving the winning consortium the right to run the stadium and receive all the income generated by it. Krzysztof Jankowski is uneasy about the city\\\'s plan for the stadium: "If it turns out that City Hall really does expect the stadium to pay for itself, we will have to pull out of the tender. You cannot find a single example in the world of a sporting arena, even one with a commercial part, being self-sustaining."

Running scared
The people we spoke to in the development and construction industries dispute that all delays arise from their mistakes or their tendency to appeal decisions. Krzysztof Jankowski of Budokor believes that "City Hall is not well-prepared for these schemes, in terms of its legal department. There are always lots of protests against plans like these, and the authorities seem ill-equipped to cope with them." He goes on to offer one possible explanation for why the will might be lacking to face up to the protests: "They become afraid to make decisions, in case they lead to investigations which could uncover corruption," said Mr Jankowski.
Rafał Pasieka, director of the Warsaw Mayor\\\'s office, admits that "there have been in the past such cases of fraud: "Public administration is now very reserved - they don\\\'t want to do something that might turn out to be very risky."
But the glaring fact is that very little has been prepared or commissioned in recent years in terms of public projects. According to the \\\'Rzeczpospolita\\\' newspaper, out of 2005\\\'s budget for such projects, only 68 pct was spent. Warsaw\\\'s citizens have a right to know why this money is not being invested for the improvement of the local economy and their standard of living. 

Nathan North