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Budimex consortium win Poland’s Ostroda ringroad court case

A district court in the Polish town of Olsztyn has ruled in favour of a consortium of Budimex and Ferrovial Agroman which challenged the awarding of a ringroad contract to a rival. The ruling means that the Salini consortium’s winning bid for the construction of a ringroad around Ostroda is overturned on the basis that it was ineffectually low. This means that the contract will go to the Budimex consortium which proposed to build the road for around €223 million. Polish builder Budimex is the consortium's m
March 18, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
A district court in the Polish town of Olsztyn has ruled in favour of a consortium of 3302 Budimex and 2717 Ferrovial Agroman which challenged the awarding of a ringroad contract to a rival.

The ruling means that the Salini consortium’s winning bid for the construction of a ringroad around Ostroda is overturned on the basis that it was ineffectually low.

This means that the contract will go to the Budimex consortium which proposed to build the road for around €223 million.

Polish builder Budimex is the consortium's main stakeholder, at 95%. The consortium must finish the work within 20 months from the contract signing.

Last December, the same Budimex and Ferrovial Agroman consortium announced it had won a tender to build a 22.6km section of the S3 express road between Silesian town of Legnica in the southwest and Lubin Poludiine, around 170km southeast of the capital Warsaw. The bid was nearly €220 million and construction is expected to take 30 months. Ferrovial Agroman is the engineering and construction arm of Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial.

Earlier this year the Polish national roads authority 1361 GDDKiA said that it will no longer look for the cheapest offer in road-building tenders. Instead, it will, in line with 1116 European Union requirements, consider whole life cycle factors such as durability, cost of exploitation and quality.

Poland has long been criticised by the road construction industry, both within the country and in the rest of Europe, for handing out tender wins to the lowest bidder with scant regard for life-cycle costs. The government has also been heavily criticised for refusing to negotiate with winning contractors when unforeseen issue push up construction costs.

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