The employers’ association of large construction companies and infrastructure concessionaires (Seopan) finalizes a battery of proposals to improve public procurement in Spain given the repeated non-compliance with budgets and deadlines, as well as the high level of litigation.
In a context in which 3,000 million euros in concessions have been stopped, Seopan will finalize this proposal to the Ministry of Transport -which a priori sees it as appropriate- for its legal analysis. It focuses on collaborative models of objective cost (Target Costing), present in most of the countries in which Spanish companies bid.
As the president of Seopan, Julián Núñez, pointed out this Monday, this is an “essential” issue, since the Spanish system is at the “antipodes” of what is done in international contracts and could be implemented in a pilot project before the end of the legislature.
The new model is based on the fact that the cost of the work is what determines the design of the work and not the other way around, it allows possible alternatives to improve the project to be evaluated and an objective cost is set with sharing of savings and cost overruns with mechanisms that reward efficiency and punish inefficiency.
With this, the contractor is compensated for the total cost of the works carried out plus a rate subject to a target cost agreed at the beginning of the project, a phase of negotiation of offers is incorporated and the risks are delimited. With these measures, Seopan, which appreciates that contracting losses have been mitigated, understands that compliance with the budget and deadlines will be guaranteed, the value of the project will be maximized and disputes that end up in court will be reduced.
Paralysis of public-private collaboration
Seopan insists on the urgency of updating the regulation and public contracting to execute more than 212,000 million European aid by 2027, and insists that the Deindexation Law discourages investment and that for this reason there is a public paralysis-nothing public of concessions infrastructure and services that is “unacceptable”.
This leads to nearly 3,000 million euros in a paralyzed budget, more than 90% of the value presented (2,142 million from Madrid’s waste collection), in 7 out of 10 unfavorable files and in which there are no new works concessions and has de facto abandoned this model.
Highway travel, for the next government
Núñez indicates that the payment for use on high-capacity roads must materialize within a period of four years from the approval of the Transformation Plan, being binding until July 2025, so that the decision that will finally be decided will be adopted in the next legislature Although the Government is working on different alternatives, it does not believe that a decision will be made as soon as the elections are close.
Reputational impact of CNMC sanctions
On the other hand, the president of Seopan underlines the need to correct the current defenselessness that ensures that the sector lives due to the files opened by the CNMC, such as the sanction of more than 200 million, which he makes public without having a final sentence that certifies the existence or not of the denounced practices.
This is causing reputational damage to the affected companies and detrimental effects on their national and international activity, he adds. For all these reasons, and in view of the fact that the National Court is annulling many of these fines, both Seopan, the CNC and the CEOE have requested that in these proceedings the right of defense and the presumption of innocence be guaranteed until there is a sentence. signed by the courts.
