Scandal in the tender for the construction of the Santariškės hospital: suspicions were raised about both the price and the owners

At present, the official announcement of the tender organized by Clinicas Santara has not been officially announced through the central public procurement information system.

However, Lukas Rekevičius, president of the Chamber of Architects, announced on Facebook that the company UAB Maspro won the tender for the hospital construction project in Santariškės, offering a price one and a half times lower than the purchase price.

L. Rekevičius believes that the company is dumping prices in this and other tenders, there are suspicions that among the owners of the company and the former directors – an employee of the Public Procurement Service.

“Here is the purchase of a new hospital building in Santariškės. Solid area – 11,500 square meters. M., The building – a modern, extremely technologically complex hospital. Even a small spaceship. The estimated price – normal, certainly not very high for an object of such complexity and importance – almost 650 thousand Eur without VAT. This is a tender, the criterion is the lowest price. There are practically no experience requirements, there are also no requirements to have some specialists in the team for a such a specific topic ”, writes L. Rekevičius.

It announces that Maspro has offered 120 thousand. but the actual project would cost even less. According to a copy of the published document, the value of the second lowest offer is 226 thousand. In addition, 279.5 thousand euros are offered. and most suppliers offered a price between 300 and 709 thousand euros.

“Here it is necessary to take into account that the price hides the geological and topographic investigation and the supervision of the project execution, it is the real price of the project – what is there of 90 thousand. “It is almost half the average of the other three offers in the queue, which is also very small and does not fully correlate with the price recommendations approved by the Ministry of the Environment”, the architect surprises.

L. Rekevičius discovered that the Maspro company was previously called UAB Numigo, and previously it was run by a person who currently works in the Public Procurement Office. According to the Records Center, the same person remains the sole owner of the business.

“Maybe I’m spoiled, I don’t believe in miracles and people’s dedication, maybe all Maspro architects, engineers and designers will work tirelessly (average salary here 203 euros with taxes) for a sacred cause, a hospital that inevitably We will all have to visit in old age. “, – evaluated L. Rekevičius.

Maspro’s annual revenue in 2019 amounted to only 2,896 euros, but in 2020 the company won 19 tenders, according to L. Rekevičius, “similar dumping prices”.

“It is especially disappointing that very important and even cult cultural objects throughout Lithuania – the Museum of the Ninth Fort, the Center for Contemporary Art – are spreading from the extremely low price with pressed wax,” writes the architect.

He would agree that sometimes a large company can offer a low price if it does not have the burden of employees: it is better to work less than pay wages for nothing.

“But with similar dumping, it is impossible to win 19 tenders a year and still have them, or we don’t know anything. I suppose that we do not know that later, already during the design, additional works appear, which are already bought without tender, and such additional works must be approved by the Public Procurement Office ”, considers L. Rekevičius.

After sharing this information, L. Rekevičius assured that it has nothing to do with the recruitment or the project.

Maspro has previously won other Santar Clinics 24.89 thousand. A tender for 1 000 EUR to prepare a project for the reconstruction of the facilities of the treatment building, building E, auditorium 03, Santariškių str. 2, Vilnius.

The public phone number provided by Maspro is currently off, the contact phone number is provided in the Records Center. Delfi managed to contact an architect working for the company, who promised that the project manager would call for comment, but did not respond to calls later.

Delfi contacted Santara Clinics and the Office of Public Procurement for comment.

After contracting VPN, the company obtained orders for 7.3 million. EUR

After the owner of Maspro handed over the director position to her husband and became an employee of VPN, the company began to smile successfully in public procurement. The woman was employed by VPT on February 7 of last year, according to her declaration of private interests.

UAB Maspro won the first public procurement as sole supplier on May 12 – for 95,565 thousand. offered design services to the municipal company Northtown Vilnius.

Maximum 6 million On July 17, Maspro signed an agreement with the Vilnius City Municipal Administration on the design and construction supervision of a special category of residential and non-residential buildings.

The total value of the contracts signed last year is 7.3 million. contracts published by the Public Procurement Office.

The VPN website states that the business owner occupies the position of chief specialist and is responsible for prevention: “reviewing the recruitment documents preventively and make recommendations to change the conditions of the recruitment documents or give for terminating the hiring in case of violations of the Law “.

Delfi contacted the woman, but she declined to comment, stating that the common position would be provided by the Office of Public Procurement.

VPN – Employee did not properly disclose interests and had no related duties

The Public Procurement Office (VPT) reported that the procurement was executed by the central contracting authority CPO.LT

According to publicly available information, we see that the aforementioned purchase on the social network Facebook was made through CPO.LT. All the providers of these services in the market were able to participate in this contract, offer their prices and enter into preliminary contracts. For more detailed circumstances related to the execution of this contract, we suggest contacting CPO LT directly, since the Public Procurement Office has not carried out the evaluation of this contract and cannot comment on the circumstances of its execution ”, says Vygandas Kieras, VPT communication specialist.

He assured that the employee of the Prevention and Publicity Department of the Public Procurement Service mentioned on Facebook had declared the fact that he had relations with the UAB Maspro company in the declaration of public and private interests.

“This has been done correctly in accordance with current legislation. We would like to point out that the VPN employee in question has not received any assignments and / or participated in the preparation, consideration, decision-making or other official duties related to her aforementioned relationships. The Public Procurement Service sees the value of combining public and private interests, and has repeatedly emphasized the importance of declaring private interests and risks in public procurement, ”says V. Kieras.

According to him, the service constantly monitors how employees declare whether they adequately assess and report potential conflicts of interest, whether they retire, etc. Given the current problems, the VPN promises to continue improving the mechanism of control and exclusion of the declaration of public and private interests.

“The management of the VPN will constantly remind your team of the need to withdraw from the risk of any risk of withdrawal of any activity that may give rise to a conflict of interest and inform directly the person in charge of the VPN of its withdrawal. employees on their obligation to complete the declarations of private interests in a timely and adequate manner and, if necessary, update them, ”says V. Kieras.

The architect would invite you to review the hiring procedure.

After publishing the information, L. Rekevičius would invite to give up the practice of buying extremely important cultural and social objects at the lowest price.

“It just came to our attention then. However, a building designed so hastily will not be of high quality, it will not be beautiful, it will not be comfortable, it will not be contextual, it will not be operated economically (or optimally). After all, probably It will never be protected or valuable in the future, although I may want too much here, ”explains L. Rekevičius.

I would suggest complying with the Architecture Law and buying the most important buildings in the state not through the lowest price but through architectural tenders.

“In the case of such important objects, the architectural competition is the only correct solution,” said L. Rekevičius.

After the recording of the architect, Facebook was the subject of a wide debate, in which politicians also participated. The public procurement procedure is criticized and there are also opinions in favor of the company.

“It just came to our knowledge then. For example, the company was not developed until 2019. Income of 5,000 euros a year, with that income the salary is normal, that is, 200 euros – people employ 0.1 position supported by some type of life. (…) If the contracting authority establishes low requirements, then the company has not done anything illegal by winning such a project ”, argued one of the participants in the discussion.

Others criticized the Santara Clinic for choosing the lowest purchasing method.

Gentville: we build too much “biedni” for the cheaper price

Environment Minister Simon Gentville shared a post that read: “We too poorto build at the cheapest price ”.

According to him, the president of the Lithuanian Chamber of Architects, L. Rekevicius, asks the right questions and the solutions will soon be presented to you.

“Tomorrow the Lithuanian Builders Association organizes a conference” Forum | Public Procurement: A Construction Success Code in which we will discuss the profound consequences of the ‘cheapest price’. In spring, the Seimas will adopt a new wording of the Public Procurement Law, in which the criteria of economic efficiency will dominate and not the lowest price ”, promises the minister.

According to him, everything is important in design, especially in hospitals: ergonomics, empathy, appearance, functionality, etc.

“By buying services at the lowest price, the state tolerates the shade, stops innovations and misses a great opportunity to create cultural heritage objects from this era for the future,” says S. Gentvilas.

We hope to add to the post.