Speaking to Lusa on the sidelines of the Liberal Profession Forum, which took place today in Porto, and where a study on public procurement was presented, the president of the Order of Architects, Avelino Oliveira, pointed out as a consequence of the behaviour of those entities the “devaluation” of the work of the architect, the “destabilization and deregulation” of the market and “poor quality” in ongoing projects, warning that this “could even jeopardize” projects of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).
According to the conclusions of the study presented by the Order of Architects, which analysed “in detail” 97 public procurement projects, worth 375 million euros, there is “unfair competition and dumping in the public procurement” of architectural services and the contracted values are “undesirably low”.
“We went to see how much money they launched these tenders for, what the value of the contracts was and how much they were awarded. We saw that it was 1.99% of the value of the work. In other words, a value lower than the value they set as the base price. The base price was 100, someone said they would do it for 60 and that was the criterion for awarding the contract”, explained Avelino Oliveira.
According to Avelino Oliveira, “this then contaminates the private sector. Just look at this: a real estate agent receives 5% of the sale value. The architect receives 1.99% from whoever grants the entire project. It is incomprehensible.”
The person in charge admitted that he did not expect the amount to be paid to architects to be that: “We did not think that the amount would be below 2%, we ourselves were surprised and the Order cannot do anything. We are prevented from acting with market regulatory measures because the Competition Authority does not allow it, therefore, only the Government and the Assembly of the Republic can legislate”.
Therefore, he added, “a report with these conclusions is being prepared to be presented to the Government and the Assembly of the Republic in October”.
Avelino Oliveira also made a “very strong appeal” to those bodies, highlighting that “this is an unsustainable situation” and that it puts many projects at risk.
“This really affects the PRR because if the projects are of lesser quality, they generate delays, deadlines slip, the works are more expensive, this is because the projects are contracted with poor quality, which also puts the safety of the projects and sustainability at risk”, he warned.
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
