The tender for Metro Line 4 is in a critical point

The postponement of tomorrow’s trial by the CoC of the appeals of the two finalists for the competition of Line 4 of the Athens Metro was decided ex officio by the CoC. According to information from ypodomes.com, the trial was postponed to January 26, 2021. This can be considered as a “test” essentially for the two consortia that claim the project and show their intentions.

Why? Today, the deadline of 10 days at their disposal to file precautionary measures for the new justification of Attiko Metro, regarding the technical offers of the participants, which was sent to the CoC, expires.

The scenarios

If, along with the current development in the much-anticipated competition, no appeal is filed, then the way is open for the process to proceed as in essence there will be no need to try the January appeal due to the new data. In order to do this, their existing appeals will have to be withdrawn from the CoC. The non-filing of appeals will pave the way for the Attiko Metro to proceed with the tender in its final phase, which is the unsealing of the financial bids from which the bidder will emerge and the construction of the new Metro line 4 will be signed at the beginning of the next year.

 With this scenario, the contract for the preliminary works that is left pending due to the current situation will be activated immediately. At the same time, the competition for the independent engineer, who will take over the control of the project and will mobilize the largest companies in the field will start. This development will be a justification for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport that has believed in this tender and the added value it will bring.

The bad scenario exists of course and with the current data it should be taken into account. In this, in addition to the current deadline of 10 days for precautionary measures, there is an additional deadline of about 60 days for the submission of the application for annulment of the new decision of Attiko Metro. In other words, if an appeal is filed today, then a major hurdle for the project will appear, something that both the government and the market want to avoid, given the fact that here we have the only very large project that is literally one step before construction begins.

The “eternal” competition

It is to be reminded that the “eternal competition” started in 2017 and during this period many appeals have been filed that it could well win the title of “judicial competition”. The colossal project of 1.8 billion euros has brought into complete conflict the two consortia (AKTOR-Ansaldo-Hitachi and AVAX-Ghella-Alstom Transport) where they additionally moved against “Attiko Metro”, demanding the exclusion of the other from the competition by freezing the competition once again.

In any case, what everyone agrees on is that the coming days are particularly critical and will determine the fate of the country’s largest public project.