Ersek: Highest and Lowest Bid Might be Excluded in Highway Tenders

Bratislava, October 23 (TASR) – The highest and lowest price bid might be automatically excluded from highway construction tenders, Transport and Construction Minister Arpad Ersek (Most-Hid) said at the Meeting of Slovak Construction Leaders in Bratislava on Monday.

“This is my vision, one of the alternatives that might at least partly prevent discord in public procurements,” said the minister, adding that it works like this in some other countries and experts are talking about this option, too.

However, the question is what should be done if only three applicants enrol in a tender. Only one bid would then remain if the highest and the lowest price bids were excluded. “In my opinion, we need to have at least five or six entities enrolled in order to do this,” added Ersek.

National Highway Company (NDS) chief Jan Durisin, who also attended the meeting, said that NDS would also like to use criteria other than the price of highway tenders. Therefore, NDS is preparing, in cooperation with the Public Procurement Office, the Transport Ministry and professionals, draft tender dossiers that will include other criteria in addition to the price.

“I chiefly mean criteria concerning the environment, experience and the quality of key experts. We want to make use of the experiences of countries like the Netherlands or Denmark in this,” explained Durisin.

In his opinion, the right combination of these criteria will result in a just price, high quality of work, reduced negative environmental impacts, as well as the responsible project management of construction so that the work is completed within a set deadline and in the desired quality. “We already plan to implement these new criteria in tenders to be announced in 2018,” said Durisin.