The last resort

The committee appointed by Marek Pol, the Minister for Infrastructure, to investigate the handling of the tender for the extension of Warsaw Okęcie Airport, is to begin its deliberations as Eurobuild goes to press.  Companies Hochtief and Strabag, whose bids were rejected in the original tender, are pinning their hopes on the committee's findings, which they believe should uncover evidence of malpractice. Should their motions for reconvening the second stage of the tender fail here too, they will take their grievances to the courts.

The Okęcie extension tender began on 10th August 2000 and the saga is now two years old. In July 2001, a repeat hearing of the first stage was ordered. Over two months later, Przedsiębiorstwo Państwowe "Porty Lotnicze" (PPL) [the State Company "Polish Airports"] announced that the following consortia had qualified for the 2nd stage: Hochtief, Budimex-Ferrovial and Strabag.  From November that year, a committee chaired by Bogdan Chudziak, analysed various documents and considered expert opinion for the second stage of the tender. Finally, after the deadline had been postponed several times, Ferrovial Agroman, Budimex and Estudio Lamela were chosen as general contractors at the end of June.  It soon became clear that Hochtief's bid had not been given due consideration and objections were made concerning certain formal and legal shortcomings.
On 19th July the General Director of PPL, Zbigniew Lesiecki, rejected Strabag and Hochtief's appeals and the Budimex consortium were officially confirmed winners of the tender. Of the protests he briefly stated that "They had no legal justification".
 However, claims that the rules: governing the equal treatment of tenderers, the transparency of procedure, honest competition and the objective evaluation of offers, were ignored and that Budimex underestimated construction costs by as much as even USD 60 million, have yet to be addressed. Furthermore, the winning consortium's design is to be developed on land which was owned by the army until 11th July. The other companies involved in  the tender were unaware of this.
If the Minister of Infrastructure challenges the PPL Director's decision, another chapter of the Okęcie tender story will begin. Whilst this may be true, would it still make sense to reconvene the tender? Some could argue that it would be better to find a plot within 50 km of Warsaw and build an airport there from a scratch. Such an investment would cost around USD 5 billion.