Acciona Agua has filed an appeal before the Central Administrative Court of Contractual Resources (TACRC) against the resolution of the contracting table to exclude them from the bidding for the contract for the expansion of the Torrevieja desalination plant awarded last Monday to the UTE formed by Ferrovial-Sacyr.
Acciona presented that appeal before the TACRC, which will lead to the paralysis of the administrative procedure for several months. Its exclusion from the bidding procedure dates back to the end of March, once the technicians analysed the extensive report presented by Acciona to justify its lower offer.
A justification that did not convince the technicians, who pointed out that “it has been detected that in various important sections that the bidder provides a justification of its cost estimates based on erroneous or unrealistic hypotheses and that it also does not consider mandatory requirements in its offer of the document that may substantially increase the costs transferred in its justification”.
This report points to other errors by Acciona when calculating costs, and aspects not taken into account. Some considerations that conclude that the offer presented “does not guarantee the execution of the service contract with full guarantee for ACUAMED as it does not demonstrate its viability.”
On Monday Acuamed awarded the contract to the Ferrovial-Cadagua-Sacyr joint venture for more than 89 million euro. The same day, Acciona submitted their appeal, registered the next day, and it is considered that the fact Acciona built the current desalination plant, the largest in Europe, could be an argument in their favour.
The execution period for these works is four years. The appeal could paralyze the formalisation of the contract, already awarded, for several months. It is a strategic infrastructure to make water cheaper and alleviate the shortage of water resources that the region of Vega Baja and Murcia has been suffering for years due to drought.
