Court of Auditors confirms decision to refuse visa to works in Lisbon schools | Lisbon
The Court of Auditors rejected the appeal presented by the Lisbon City Council regarding the award of a set of works for the requalification of schools that are managed by the municipality, with a total value of 30 million euros. In the decision, the supporting criteria that support the judges’ first decision should be maintained: there is a lack of more elaborate information on the works that are defined as the requirement of each one the municipality must have taken care of the works that are required at the time of the contest public. competitors submit a work plan. Thus, keeping some of the works in these views to the contracts contracted to schools previous to the first, to some of the works in the state of conservation.
At stake is a set of contracts in 55 schools in the municipality, worth 30 million euros, awarded by the former executive of Fernando Medina, after the National Civil Engineering Laboratory (LNEC) carried out, in 2018, a study that concluded that a third of Lisbon’s primary schools and kindergartens are in a “bad” or “very bad” state of repair. There were 18 schools, among 55, such as the Basic School in Vale de Alcântara, Rosa Lobato de Faria, São Sebastião da Pedreira, Parque Silva Porto or Alexandre Herculano. The report also revealed that the majority of schools (31) were in an “average” state of conservation, were in “good” and “excellent” condition.
For this reason, the interventions have different levels of complexity: some will be works of general improvement — deeper — and others just maintenance. The Chamber went ahead, public like this, with the launch of a contest, dividing the schools to intervene in eight lots. The works ended up being awarded on the basis of the “most advantageous economic proposal, in the form of price assessment as the only aspect of the execution of the contract to be signed”.
In a decision of May 12, 2021, signed by judges Alziro Antunes Cardoso (rapporteur), Fernando Oliveira Silva and Mendes Serrano decision, who “as they do the procedure at a price, parts were not integrated by a map of works, nor were they established the need for competitors to present a work plan”. The understanding that they are necessary under the Public Contracts, when the school establishments are in different states of conservation and mainly have different interventions. The issuance of visas prior to the various undertakings was thus refused.
Faced with the decision, the Lisbon City Council decided, arguing that the activities included in the specifications “represent concrete services that do not perform the technical specialization that requires the existence of a project project”. “The same work in the list of activities confirms that they are exclusively concerned with the supply, assembly or execution of autonomous components – that is, that they do not need to be made compatible with others and that they do not need the logical chain that makes an execution project necessary, first , and a work plan, then, to propose a sequence chamber of different works”, in the challenge to the decision, which is cited in the judgment.
However, the advisory judges, Sofia David, Maria dos Anjos Capote and Paulo Dá Mesquita, did not accept these arguments, confirming, on January 4, 2022, the previous decision. The work planned in non-local cities 2,5 and the three years between “are just a few years of study”, as the three years claim. “The extended temporality of contracts [três anos], combined with the great diversity of the works, will necessarily imply a certain complexity in the execution of the works”, they defend.
