The "Urgent" Water Work Took Two Years And Three Months to Be Awarded
<p>This is the reliever Cildáñez Arroyo. The work contracts were terminated in 2001 and because of the “public interest” of the work, direct contracting was authorized. The AGN had recommended to the Secretariat of Water Resources to give continuity to a project that ended only in 2006 and cost more than the initial $ 60 million budget.</p>
The work of reliever Cildáñez Arroyo took two years and three months to be awarded although, for reasons of urgency, execution was made by direct recruitment.
On March 28, 2001 the State terminated the contract with the firm that until then was conducting the storm sewer project. In the same decision, it authorized the Department of Public Works to make a direct procurement to speed up the time, appealing to the "urgent reasons" which provides subsection "c" Article 9 of Law 13,064.
However, the new opening of bids was scheduled for just nine months and three weeks after termination, December 20, 2001 (a difficult day for errands in the center).
With the financial crisis, it had to wait seven months until July 2, 2002, for the opening of bids. During that time, the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) prepared a report on the public works contract "Drains Storm North - Access Capital Federal and General Paz Avenue - Reliever Cildáñez", in which it recommended that the Secretariat of Resources Water (SSRH) give "continuity to the execution of works."
On July 2nd the act was carried out without the contractual framework being reviewed, as they had asked the companies that acquired the specifications, and on the basis of a "totally outdated official budget," said the Watchdog.
It took almost a year, until June 26, 2003, for the work to be awarded. It took 820 days, a period which, according to the AGN, "it exceeds reasonable temporal patterns to finalize the procedure for the award of a contract with normative framework on reasons of urgency."
The report adds that in the meantime, it could have made a new call "based on less uncertain conditions and an adequate budget to actual market values." It’s that on July 2, 2002 the official budget was $ 28,322,221, and the three companies that acquired files, two of them did not submit bids and quoted a remaining amount of $ 84,297,056, i.e. a 198 % difference.
That gap narrowed to 29% when the Undersecretariat of Water Resources official budget reformulated and brought it to $65,349,243. The AGN, meanwhile, says that the upgrade should be "shaped prior to the call."
After a process of negotiation, and the company negotiated SSRH reached an agreement: the company discounted the 11.11% of its basic offering and received in exchange a financial deposit of 10% of the total contract. The Audit notes that the advance of funds is an "exception to the general principle of public accounting and the system of certification and payment provided by the National Public Works Act" and that there is no history of that advance being authorized by the Executive Power.
On March 28th, 2006, the SSRH signed the Provisional Acceptance Certificate of the work and certified the final completion of the work. Until December 31, 2005, the Arroyo reliever Cildáñez cost $ 88,748,070.